Boss hands young Thorne a present
Nov 30 2009 by Christopher Lepkowski, Birmingham Mail
ROBERTO Di Matteo handed George Thorne an early Christmas present by making him Albion’s youngest debutant in 88 years.
The midfielder came on as a late substitute after being a surprise inclusion in Di Matteo’s squad.
Thorne replaced Simon Cox in the 87th minute and touched the ball several times during the closing stages.
At 16 years and ten months, he became Albion’s youngest player since Charlie ‘Tug’ Williams in 1921, who was 16 years and 73 days old when he made his debut for the club.
Di Matteo said afterwards: “It was a little Christmas present for him. We were 4-0 up. He’s shown a bit of potential and we’ll keep monitoring him.
“He’s trained with us, as have many other youth team players, so we gave him a little go. He phoned up all his family when I told him he was in the squad.”
Di Matteo picked out two surprise members of his squad for particular praise following the comfortable win at Sheffield Wednesday – centre-halves Abou Meite and Jonas Olsson.
“I would pick out my two centre-halves because they were brilliant,” the manager added.
“You focus your attentions on the offensive players as the ones who score the goals but I looked at the centre-halves and they were so strong. They defended everything that came towards them.”
Di Matteo added: “I’m smiling now.
“We were looking for three points and I believe that, if you play well over the long term, you get results. On Saturday, we put in another great performance, controlled the game and dictated the tempo. We scored the goals and finished off the game in the first half with the third goal. Winning 1-0 is good enough for me.”
