Agyei had already played 50-odd L1 games across three loan spells (Walsall, Coventry and Blackpool) before he came here. At 22 he’s older than Brannagan and Dickie were when they arrived and started playing regularly here, in this same division, and they both had less games and far less EFL experience when they signed. Brannagan had a brief loan spell at Fleetwood where he was mostly on the bench and made around a dozen appearances all in, and Dickie spent a season in the Conference with Cheltenham. Dickie had also been on loan at Lincoln in L2 before he joined us in January but he’d lost his place in their starting lineup for a month or so by that point. Agyei also came from a Premier League club where he’d made several sub appearances and been in the match day squad multiple times more, and their fans were largely shocked that he didn’t sign a new deal in the summer.
This narrative that Agyei is some sort of untested child who needs to build up to this division is utter, utter nonsense. Just look at the facts of everything above. He’s played more games in League One and is more than a year older than Shandon Baptiste, for crying out loud. He’s more than six months older than Mark Sykes, with more than double the L1 appearances under his belt, and has been a full time footballer for nearly five years rather than Sykes’ 12 months.
I’m not saying Agyei is the messiah any more than I’m saying he definitely isn’t, but this yarn that seems to have been spun about him being some sort of total novice is factually untrue. Quite why that’s coming out of the club when it’s factually inaccurate is beyond me. It’s disingenuous.
