Morgan Rogers - PFA Young Player of the Year 24/25

[Toronto Villa]

From Damian who I assume is responding to Morgan Rogers rumours

General rule: When I want to know the news I go to sources that I trust, I go to the many people that is able to do fact checkkng or try to. Sources with agenda, clickbait or not fact checking intention just deserve to be ignored, Nothing else. That is your power.

https://x.com/dv1874/status/1958568151131529451?s=46

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

This prick here, the tap in merchant, spouting “dream target” Morgan Rogers to Spurs bollocks

https://x.com/_wn_utv_/status/1958288877590110387?s=46

What a load of shite, you could apply his logic to any fanciful transfer.
Barnets dream target is Kylian Mbappe but they understand a deal will be very difficult to do.

[Toronto Villa]

This prick here, the tap in merchant, spouting “dream target” Morgan Rogers to Spurs bollocks

https://x.com/_wn_utv_/status/1958288877590110387?s=46

What a load of shite, you could apply his logic to any fanciful transfer.
Barnets dream target is Kylian Mbappe but they understand a deal will be very difficult to do.

Yep he’s a twat. My dream target is Jessica Alba but I’m sure she’d issue a sharp fuck off and restraining order.

[Drummond]

https://x.com/AVFCOfficial/status/1958576079498564051?t=fNMobcdnF9cjIe9bLL-Uhw&s=19

I think Rogers is happy.

[eamonn]

A bit harsh on Romano! He's providing a service one step above tabloid tittle-tattle which has given football fans the horn since, I dunno, 1988? Fans listen to what he says. Job done.

[PaulWinch again]

Indeed, not sure he’s a “twat” or a “prick” for what he does - a bit sad maybe - but we seem happy enough when it’s something we want to hear.

[pauliewalnuts]

I can confirm, guys, Romano is both a twat and a prick.

[Drummond]

It's not him it's Levy telling him that he wants Rogers, so the Spuds fans think they're going for it.

[Percy McCarthy]

Morgz is happy at the Villa, he tells The Times.

Also does that ‘I’m staying here’ thing in the new kit video. The one that Duran did at West Ham lol.

[PaulWinch again]

Picked up by Miguel Delaney too. I maintain selling him now is basically us throwing in the towel - or even if that isn’t the intent, that is the message it sends. We shouldn’t consider a sale unless it’s such an insane figure (£125m + say) that it basically is something that couldn’t be refused. That wouldn’t happen though, so basically it should be no sale at all.

[Brazilian Villain]

A bit harsh on Romano! He's providing a service one step above tabloid tittle-tattle which has given football fans the horn since, I dunno, 1988? Fans listen to what he says. Job done.

Agreed, and a lot cheaper than ringing ClubCall.

[jwarry]

In The Times today.  Sounds happy enough to me! And I always wondered why Unai kept him when he was playing crap….

Rogers: Rejection and pain I suffered in lower leagues made me player I am. Shaped by loan spells in EFL, the much admired 23-year-old, who has broken into the England squad and is the new PFA young player of the year, says how happy he is at Aston Villa
 
Charlotte Duncker

The past 12 months could not have gone much better for Morgan Rogers. Only 579 days after his last game for Middlesbrough in the Championship he is setting targets for his second year in the top flight — but it will be difficult to beat his first.

He played a key part in keeping Aston Villa in Europe last season, featured heavily in their run to the Champions League quarter-finals, earned a first senior England call-up and now has the prestigious PFA young player of the year award in his cabinet. “Nobody could have written what happened to me in the last 12 months,” Rogers says as he reflects on a career-defining year.

It was not until he picked up the trophy on Tuesday evening, at the star-studded ceremony in Manchester, and looked at the names that preceded his, that the scale of his achievement began to sink in.

“It's a really nice moment to know that I've kind of followed them. These are players I've played with and played against and admired in the Premier League,” he says. “I think the weird feeling about it is that we're all in the same group, we all get in that category and no one can take that away from me.”

But how did the 23-year-old get here? It is a journey that began in the academies of West Bromwich Albion and Manchester City but Rogers was moulded in League One and the Championship during loan spells at Lincoln City, Bournemouth and Blackpool, before his move to Middlesbrough in 2023.

Unai Emery, the Villa head coach, has been a pivotal figure in his progress, and we will get to him later, but without those three loans Rogers believes he would not be the player he is today.
“It [those loan spells] is everything,” he says. “I had to go through a lot of struggles, a lot of pain, a lot of hard days of not playing in League One, not playing in the Championship and how I combat that and how I deal with that, I had to find myself as a player.

“I had to find that out in the lower leagues — what works in a professional game, because what works in academy football and the way you play in academy football is not the same in League One or the Championship.

“Those experiences helped me become the player I am, because the player I am now is not who I was as an academy player, or at Man City. I had to learn that on the fly, really, how [in the EFL] it's completely different to academy football, and how I had to use my strengths in a different way to be successful.”

While he thrived at Lincoln, clicking with the manager, Michael Appleton, the real test came the next season when he spent the 2021-22 campaign at Bournemouth. He had gone from being the best player at certain age groups to struggling to get a place in the team, with Scott Parker deciding after the January window to omit him from his 25-man squad altogether.

It was the lowest point of his career, making only three starts in his 17 appearances. To have achieved what he has felt impossible back then.
“At the time all you think is, if I'm not playing, I'm not doing well, that's life or death. But it's not,” he says, as he recalls how his family helped him through that difficult period. “Ultimately, I was 19 years old and my first loan spell in the Championship was not necessarily going to go right.”

Ever since his £8million move to Villa in January last year, however, things could not have gone more right for Rogers. He had an impact in the second half of the 2023-24 season, where Villa finished fourth, but it was last season where he really stepped up.

He started 37 Premier League games (missing the 38th through suspension) and all of Villa's 12 Champions League fixtures, establishing himself as a vital part of Emery's well-oiled machine. And it was a pre-season conversation with the Spaniard that gave Rogers the confidence to thrive in his first full campaign in the top flight.
“The manager giving me loads of trust and playing me through the good and the bad times really helped,” he says. “I'm not always going to be perfect, everything's not always going to come off the way I play. It's not possible for everything to work and for it to be a good day all the time, but the manager had that belief in me.
“I remember him telling me at one stage that the reason he's kept me on in certain games is because he knows that if I keep going at it, the moment will come and the chance will come and he wants that to fall to me. Giving me that pressure and that challenge helped me step up and show that I can be a big part of this group.”

The Champions League run was a pinch-me moment. “I just think all of it, even the first game listening to that music when you walk out, is just something you hear as a kid and watch as a kid, and to be one of them players is a different kind of feeling,” he says.

But the real pinnacle of last season was his first senior England call-up. It came under Lee Carsley in November but he has since built a strong bond with Thomas Tuchel and has aspirations to be part of next summer's World Cup squad.

“That's the best feeling I've ever had. That's what you dream of as a kid. I think that's the pinnacle of football for me,” he says of his first call-up. “But I think not just for me, for my family, that's more of one that I know that they're more proud of because that means everything to them.”

To get that plane ticket across the Atlantic next summer he will have to produce on the same level as last season and, he believes, improve his consistency.

But there are already doubts about Villa's ability to maintain the form they have shown in the past two seasons owing to financial constraints restricting their ability to invest in the squad in this window. While their rivals have spent hundreds of millions, they have signed just one senior player, the Nice forward Evann Guessand.

“The same squad got sixth [in the Premier League] but should have been fifth if things had gone right on the last day. That's what we say to that,” Rogers says. “Sometimes people get caught up in thinking we need to sign loads of players because everyone's signed loads of players.

“But this squad got us to where we are and we are in the position we are because of all the players here. So I wouldn't be too bogged down or too fixated on that.”

The key to that, if Villa do not bring anyone else in before the window closes, is keeping their best players, and Rogers is most definitely one of them. The hierarchy have put “not for sale” signs on a number of their squad, and while Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur are believed to be looking at Rogers, he is focused on just one thing.

“I'm happy here,” he says. “I love football. I love nothing more than just coming out on the pitch and playing football and that's what I'm doing. I don't think about anything else. I can't predict the next 12 months or anything in the future. It's just about playing football, enjoying my football and showing everyone what I can do.”

If the past year is anything to go by then he could be in for quite a ride.

[London Villan]

Big endorsement from Unai in him - if the manager trusts you, it must give you masses of confidence. We need a couple more with that type of talent, that can step into the gap when Morgan is having an off day.

[eamonn]

Sky Sports News have spun it to suggest he's issued a come and get me plea, i guess they constantly need content to dissect.

[ozzjim]

Big endorsement from Unai in him - if the manager trusts you, it must give you masses of confidence. We need a couple more with that type of talent, that can step into the gap when Morgan is having an off day.

That's the big key from here, if Morgan isn't playing well, we need someone else on the pitch that can pull something out the bag. When he's on he's world class, when he's off he's miles off.