Manchester City played eight academy graduates in the last round of the Carabao Cup with another two unused substitutes.
Jaden Heskey
Jaden Heskey was among the City debutants at Huddersfield in the third round of the Carabao Cup
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For the second EFL Trophy game in a row, Manchester City will have to make some tough decisions around their academy stars next week.
Ben Wilkinson's side have had a mixed bag of it so far, beating Oldham Athletic 5-1 at Boundary Park before losing 3-0 to Bolton Wanderers. That makes next week's trip to the New York Stadium to face Rotherham the decisive fixture in their bid to reach the knockout stages.
Part of that is the learning curve for young footballers of suddenly going up against senior professionals, but against Bolton, they were compromised by the fact that the first team played at Huddersfield in the third round of the Carabao Cup the following night.
Ten academy graduates were named in Pep Guardiola's matchday squad and of those, Stephen Mfuni, Kaden Braithwaite, Jaden Heskey, Reigan Heskey and Divine Mukasa could all potentially have played for the Under-21s at Bolton instead. Reigan Heskey did actually play on successive nights.
City took great delight in that kind of academy representation in West Yorkshire in a first-team competition. There were three debuts in total, and it was a night of valuable experience for many of those players used to being involved in Wilkinson's group.
But history is not guaranteed to be repeated next week. City's development squad will take on Rotherham on Tuesday night, while the first team will be in South Wales on Wednesday to face Swansea in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup.
Guardiola could run the rule of some of his young guns instead, but as things stand his squad is in a much stronger position fitness-wise now than they were a month ago. There is little room for academy involvement.
None of those youngsters were in first-team training ahead of the trip to Villarreal this week and if the squad continues to get a clean bill of health, City could field two completely different XIs against Aston Villa on Sunday and Swansea on Wednesday without the need to raid Wilkinson's group.
So it might make sense for the EDS head coach to be given a strong squad to take to Rotherham. They sit third in the group behind City but can leapfrog them to qualify by winning or by drawing and then winning the penalty shoot-out that follows when group stage games finish level.
The stakes make it another test for those academy players, and Wilkinson will want them to reach the knockout stages and give them more games in this competition. To achieve that, he might be able to field his strongest squad without Guardiola taking any of those young stars off him this week.
After that early win at Oldham, he was full of praise for the team but also urged them to make sure they built on the performance the scoreline.
“You don’t get too many nights like this in this competition so they should be really proud of what they’ve done," he said.
“But also that we have to use it as a springboard to not waste in the next two [EFL Trophy] games and to make sure that in those two games we give the best account of ourselves and we do absolutely everything to get through to the next stage.”
If City's young guns were to win 5-1 at Oldham but not get out of the group, that would feel like a waste.
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