Ajose impressing on loan

As I watched my local side Bury beat Shrewsbury Town 1 – 0 at Gigg Lane last night live on Sky, there was one player who stood out. Nicky Ajose.

The Bury born youngster is on loan from Manchester United and has impressed so far. He’s a regular starter for Alan Knill’s men and has scored 6 goals in 16 appearances and is the Shaker’s joint second leading scorer behind the prolific Ryan Lowe who grabbed the winner against his former club last night.

Ajose, 19 is a small nippy striker who can also play as a winger. He’s electric. I’ve personally played against him at school level and you could tell from an early age he would make it in the professional game. Ajose seems to have that hunger and work ethic needed to succeed and there were numerous times he broke in behind the Shrewsbury defence, but chose the wrong option in shooting rather than pulling the ball back for his striker partner. That’s just lack of experience which will come with games and age. He also hit a cracking effort towards the end of the game and was only denied via the crossbar.

The youngster who also has 4 U16 caps and 1 U17 cap for England has quick feet and he used that to his advantage. There was a brilliant piece of play in which he wriggled out of 3 Shrewsbury players from a throw-in and put in a delightful ball for Ryan Lowe who narrowly missed converting.

His performance last night was merited with the man of the match award. He’s looking like a real talent and he will hope to build on his glowing reputation at Bury where he will ply his trade until the end of June.

When he does return to United, don’t be surprised if Sir Alex sends him back on loan to a club higher up in the league. He will struggle to break into the United first team next season with the vast amount of strikers we possess. Welbeck and possibly Diouf will be ahead of him in the pecking order, so it may be a couple of years until we see this prestigious talent in the Premier League, but he’s definitely a name to look out for.