Manchester City are learning a bold transfer decision they made in 2019 was the right call, even if it didn't work out at the time.
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Morgan Rogers has taken the Premier League by storm and is now starting for England after a spell at Man City that didn't go to plan.
Perhaps it is a reflection of Manchester City's season that they had no representatives in a competitive England starting line up on Monday.
With Phil Foden and Kyle Walker their only call-ups, both were dropped leaving a sky blue hole in Thomas Tuchel's XI. Before that, there have only been two competitive internationals without a City starter since March 2016, and one of those came a few days after the 2023 Champions League final where there are fairly clear mitigating circumstances for not starting a City player who had spent the last few days celebrating in Istanbul, Ibiza and Manchester.
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Instead, Tuchel got a look at a number of other players, however there was still a City flavour in his line up with former academy graduate Morgan Rogers handed his first international start.
Rogers was a high-profile £4m signing for City's academy from West Brom in 2019, going on to win the FA Youth Cup with City a year later and playing in an all-conquering under-21 side that boasted the likes of Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, James McAtee, Oscar Bobb, Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Tommy Doyle.
But after injury and a few loan moves stalled his progress, Rogers left four years alter for Middlesbrough, taking a loss on a player who now freely admits did not live up to the expectation.
Opening up before his full England debut this week, he told ITV Sport: "It was the adaptation. I struggled, never experienced anything different in a footballing sense before that. I struggled to be that in an all-stars team in that age group. To fit in and show my quality within that.
"I found it very difficult to be able to be me in a structured team that we had. At West Brom I could be me and play my game. I was surrounded by everyone playing for their countries, having to adapt I found really difficult and really struggled."
City signed Rogers after he tore them apart in a Youth Cup game, and he says he enjoyed a loan at Lincoln as he had a smile back on his face, adding "I found myself again." But at Bournemouth, where he barely played, he 'lost himself again' and "lost my identity".
The writing was on the wall at City as his Youth Cup teammates surged ahead, so a permanent exit felt inevitable. “I wasn’t good enough, simple as that. I wasn’t ready," he reflected bluntly on his City spell.
"I wasn't ready to be there, I wasn't myself. I wasn't the person that they signed in terms of what they expected me to go on and be. Yeah, it wasn't the right player at the right time for me or the club.
"At the age groups when I was younger, I was considered one of the better ones for sure, so everyone thought I was going to accelerate probably quickly; just that stepping stone when I moved to City everyone was talking about that move and 'The next academy player at Man City' kind of thing, the next person to come up."
A 15 per cent sell-on clause inserted in his sale to Boro meant that City roughly broke even on their investment in Rogers when he secured a big-money move to Aston Villa last year. He has not looked back at Villa Park, becoming a regular in the Premier League and Champions League.
Now, he's ahead of his former club in Europe and starting ahead of Phil Foden for England. He credits those loan spells away from City as giving him the mental toughness that has inspired his rapid rise at Villa.
So while City may wonder if there is any significance to their England snub this week (injuries have obviously played a role, too), they can look at Rogers and see they were right to invest what they did - even if they haven't been the ones to benefit.
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