It was during Leeds United's heated friendly clash with Aston Villa in Australia when John McGinn planted his studs into the right ankle of Archie Gray, leaving the 16-year-old in a heap on the floor. The young midfielder had only just entered the pitch but was stretchered off in tears moments later.
The youngster, who has generated so much excitement in his fleeting senior career, looked very distressed as his exited the field. It didn’t look good.
Fortunately, it proved only a minor injury, but his agent Hayden Evans was far from pleased with the challenge.
“McGinn physically turns his back in the challenge, leaves his foot in, a bit of a dig with it as well. It’s like a Sunday League old fella making sure that the young lad knows he’s there, it was a bit cheap I thought,” Evans told the The Athletic.
Evans added: “People are saying it’s a repercussion from the previous tackle by Archie. When you look at the slow-mo of both, Archie’s was fair, hard but fair.”
Leeds lost a much-loved figure when academy graduate Kalvin Phillips joined Manchester City this summer. But every cloud has a silver lining and Jesse Marsch, along with the Leeds supporters, will be hoping that Gray will be the next homegrown talent to succeed.
“We were trying to keep it calm a little bit but once that talent comes out, and he started with the performances that he’s given, you’re not really going to be suppressing the talent,” Evans admitted.
“It wasn’t a surprise that he was in the squad. I think overexposure is different things. If overexposure is getting minutes, no problem at all.
"But if it's all the other stuff off the field, because he's young, and all the rest of the excitement around it, then there's nobody better than the Gray family and us as an agency to just calm all that down."
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