Last summer, Ben Doak joined Boro on loan from Liverpool. Another teenager hoping to make his mark, with those in the know predicting big things. In the first half of last season, prior to suffering an injury, Doak was one of the best players in the Championship. Earlier this week, the 19-year-old completed a £25m move to Bournemouth.
No pressure then, Sverre Nypan. Like Rogers and Doak, the Norwegian teenager will be dipping his toe into English senior football with Middlesbrough after joining on a season-long loan from Manchester City earlier this week. Like his two predecessors, he arrives on Teesside with a glowing endorsement from one of the country’s biggest teams. Will he also be a huge success? Time will tell. But Boro boss Rob Edwards cannot wait to find out.
“We’re really excited to have Sverre at the football club,” said Edwards, who is set to hand Nypan a first Boro appearance at some stage of tomorrow’s game at Norwich City. “He’s a really talented player, and we’re thankful to Manchester City, and Sverre and his team, for trusting us with the next step of his development.
“He’s a talented footballer, and he slots nicely into the group, up against a lot of competition. He’s someone who I think can make a big impact this season.
“He’s coming from one of the biggest football clubs in the world. They’ve obviously made a sizeable investment in Sverre, so that adds a little bit of pressure for him. He’s got to be able to handle that, but he’s a young guy and I want to try to relieve a bit of that if I can.
“I know there’ll be excitement around him, and rightly so because he’s a very talented player. But he’s also 18 years old and we need to make sure we manage that as well. He’ll get minutes here, and then let’s see how he goes. But we’re all excited.”
He scored 14 goals in those 70 matches, and is set to play in an attacking-midfield role with Boro where his vision and creativity should hopefully come to the fore.
“He’s an attacking midfield player, and he’s really good at receiving the ball in those spaces between units, those little pockets and half-pockets,” said Edwards. “He’s good at driving with the ball, and he’s a creator.
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“We want him to be able to create for us, but for him to do that, we need to be good at getting him the ball in the right spaces and areas. We try to have a structure in how we play, but there’s an element of freedom in that as well.
“He’s intelligent enough to be able to find good spaces and make things happen. Again, he’s a young player, so we don’t want to heap too much pressure on him, but he’s someone we think can help us score and create.”
Whereas Nypan will be at Carrow Road tomorrow, Boro’s other midweek signing will be on the opposite side of the world in the United States.
Adilson Malanda joined Boro in an $8.5m move from Charlotte FC, but has returned to the MLS side on loan to enable him to continue contributing to their ongoing attempts to qualify for the play-offs.
“He’s [Malanda] another one where the recruitment team have been working hard for a long time,” said the Boro boss. “It’s a big pat on the back to those guys because a lot of hard work has gone in there.
“It’s an exciting signing for the club because he’s a really good player. He’s someone we’ve got very high hopes for, and I’m looking forward to having him in, in January.”
The fact that Boro were willing to pay more than £6m for a defender, knowing they would not be able to play him until January, underlines just how highly the club’s recruitment team rate Malanda.
The somewhat unusual arrangement also highlights the extent to which the hierarchy are satisfied with their current centre-halves, a sentiment Edwards shares.
“We’ve got a lot of trust and faith in the guys we’ve got here at the moment,” he said. “When he does arrive, I think he’ll bring brilliant strength to an already strong department. But the lads that are here now are performing really well.
“We’ve got another couple in there – George [Edmundson] is obviously back and Darragh [Lenihan] has trained in the last couple of days. We’re good in that department, but he’s a top player.
“It was right that he was able to finish the season off [in the US]. We don’t fully know when his season will end because of the play-off situation, but we know when he’ll be available for us, which is January.”
