A LONE RANGER TURNED GOOD!

BARRING the three months that he missed last season, undergoing a hernia operation, Angelo Balanta has enjoyed playing regular football over the years.

- Sean Cole

But it wasn’t always this way. At the start of his career, as a young prospect at Queens Park Rangers, stability was almost impossible to come by and he feels it hampered his progress.

“At the time, QPR were going through a lot of investment,” the striker, now at Dagenham & Redbridge, told The NLP.

“New owners came in and brought a load of experienced, proven players. That dampened my development to an extent. I had about five managers in one season, so you can only imagine, for a young kid like myself coming through, what that was like.

“One manager might like me, but the next might not like me. That affected my confidence and things have a domino effect. It was very hard to hold down a regular place. There were a lot of proven players that came through the door.

Stop-start

“When the investment came in, they wanted to get the club into the Premier League, which is understandable, but as a youngster it was very hard to get any game time. I had to go out on loan, come back, prove myself again and then go out on loan. It was stop-start.”