I didn’t see enough of him to have that opinion. But is he really that good? Or do people just want him to be a success because of his banter. Not my opinion a genuine question.
He was tearing it up in the u23s when Chris Powell was here and earnt a debut in the JPT only for some dirty Col Ewe ****er to do his ACL when he came on as sub with 5 minutes left at 2-0 down in a dead rubber.
He fought back from that injury and was plunged straight into a league debut at Oxford under Sol on the basis of his performances first week(?) back in training after a year out and without even a reserve game under his belt yet impressed, scoring on his debut in one of our best performances that season albeit we faded and lost after he went off.
Next week he played well again as we beat (an albeit poor) Bristol Rovers, looking the part again with an energetic performance in midfield and intelligent use of the ball.
Then Covid hits and interrupts all momentum just as he was getting back into the swing of things with two good performances (both individually and team) out of two.
Abandoned during lockdown (and furloughed?) he has to continue his rehabilitation by himself. We don’t get a manager until 3 weeks before the season, leaving the team seriously undercooked.
First league game back is against a Harrogate side who returned to training a month earlier and were buoyant having just weeks earlier won in the play-offs. Lewis is paired with Isaac Hutchinson in the centre with Egbri and the loanee Jordan Green on the wings, one of the most inexperienced, and lightweight midfields even seen in the EFL. Unsurprisingly that midfield and line-up gets overrun. He makes 2 further sub appearances before suffering an ACL to the other knee in another pointless JPT match that rules him out for another year.
By the time he’s back he’s on his 7th manager in about 3 years. He goes out on loan to Tilly’s Heybridge and helps turn their season around.
He returns to Southend and makes his first start of the season at Notts County where we go 1-0 up and put up our best 45 minutes of the season to date as we close down fast out of possession and spread the ball nicely in possession but he tires and we end up with an outfield player in goal and losing 4-1 once he’s gone off.
We then sign Harrison Neal on loan to add some steel which pushes him back in the pecking order. He gets only two more starts, one in a makeshift Trophy side, one in the League, both times he has to carry the deadweight of Will Atkinson.
I thought he always looked the part: he was the most comfortable in possession of all our youngsters, he looked to use the ball intelligently, made great runs off the ball that created space for team mates, out of possession he accelerated well to close down opponents and general looked lively. I felt we generally played better with him in the team than out of it, our football was more flowing.
More than any of the wave of youngsters who made their league debut under Sol I felt he looked the part. But that view may be coloured by the paucity of talent we had at the time. The likes of Dunne, Ogogo, Phillips, Atkinson, Kinali, Egbri (although I loved his effort) would make a lot of players seem good in comparison.
My main question mark would be his fitness. I’d like to think that was down to the stop-start nature of his seasons with all those injuries but I was very disappointed when he couldn’t last 90 minutes on his final start (the one where he was replaced by Benton).
He definitely needs games. He may be the unluckiest player, although Sam Barratt, another favourite of mine, might run him close on that front. Only time will tell if he’ll recover from all those set backs that stunted his development. If he does Tonbridge have a gem on their hands.
