Powell's Rare Talent Is Finally Being Fulfilled

And He’s Putting In A Shift.

- Gregor Robertson

ON THE day I signed for Crewe Alexandra in the summer of 2012, their Reaseheath training ground was bristling with pride. A few days earlier, academy graduate Nick Powell, fresh from securing Crewe’s promotion to League One with that spectacular strike in the League Two play-off final at Wembley, had left for Manchester United for a fee of £6m.

I remember Neil Baker, Crewe’s long-standing coach, saying “He’ll play for England,” as though it were a statement of fact. Mind you, Sir Alex Ferguson agreed.

At Reaseheath, however, just a few years earlier, there had been doubts that Powell would make it as a professional footballer at all. His talent was never in doubt. His application was where the question mark lay.

My new team-mates told me Powell had done things in training that would make you rub your eyes in awe, though not always with the ball.

In one session, after going down under a challenge, Powell thought he should have been awarded a free-kick.

“Play on!” came the call from Steve Davis, the manager.

Powell’s pique was such that he pulled the hood of his training jacket over his head and, for the next ten minutes, lay down on the pitch in protest.

When there was gym work to be done in the afternoon, he would quip – at 17 years old – that they didn’t pay him enough to do all this extra work.

The picture they painted was not of a bad egg.