By james art Decisions about academy graduates can be some of the most difficult for a football club to make, with many left pondering whether to gamble on a teenager’s progress for months.
Will he realize his potential? Does he have the right skill set to fit into the team? Does he want it enough? There will be so many ifs and maybes that define the budding career of many players.
Sometimes clubs succeed with these decisions and sometimes they live to regret their decisions, with Plymouth Argyle experiencing the latter as they saw one of their own return with a vengeance after being let off at Home Park.
Isaac Vassell has taken the Football League by storm for a brief period in the last decade, while the Pilgrims could only watch as their academy graduate excelled.
Isaac Vassell fails to qualify for Plymouth Argyle
After coming up through the ranks at Home Park, Vassell made his debut for the beleaguered Argyle side in a 1-1 draw with Shrewsbury Town at the start of the 2011/12 season, coming on as a late substitute for Tom Hitchcock.
Having suffered back-to-back relegations from the Championship to League Two, the Green Army were only happy with the squad’s support on this opening day, such were the major financial problems that have loomed over them over the past 12 months.
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The Pilgrims have made a decent start to the 2024/25 campaign, with their form at home a huge reason for that.
Players weren’t paying, administrators were moving and the squad still at the club was assembled ahead of that trip to Shropshire, with Carl Fletcher’s equalizer that day celebrated as a cup-winning moment.
The heart of the club was still beating and the fanbase was coming together like never before, with Vassell given brief moments to shine alongside Jordan Kop, Jared Sims and Curtis Nelson after coming out of the academy.
But overall the winger’s playing time was limited even if the squad was pushed to the limit, with player-manager Fletcher only using him six times as a substitute before sending him off to get some non-league game time.
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Isaac Vassell Plymouth Argyle League Stats (FBRef) |
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|---|---|
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Appearances |
6 |
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It starts |
0 |
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Minutes played |
86 |
Having done enough to earn himself a one-year extension at the club in the summer of 2013, first-team opportunities were still elusive, with relegation inevitable after the year, with Cornish side Truro City only too happy to take him from the hands of Argyll.
A non-league spell resurrected Isaac Vassell’s career ahead of a move to Luton Town
Leaving the full-time football life can never be easy for someone who has come up through the Football League, with hopes and dreams of building a career in the game already looking like slipping away in his early 20s.
But when faced with this scenario, a player can either sink or swim, and Vassell dropped into the sixth tier with a point to prove as he worked tirelessly on his game and wreaked havoc on his new employers.
Ten goals in 39 games from his wide position was testament to a player who plays with fire in his belly and doesn’t let a dip in the semi-professional game affect his vision of reaching the top.
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That commitment was rewarded just two years after leaving Argyle when Luton Town clicked ahead and the Hatters in the midst of their own ascent back up the football pyramid.
With both club and player looking for redemption, the two were a match made in heaven, with Vassell carving up League Two defenses on his return to the Football League with 14 goals in all competitions, making the EFL sit up and take notice .
Five goals in four games in January and February is testament to the red-hot form the striker has been in, while a typically cheeky performance when Argyle went to Kenilworth Road made the Greens realize just what they had been missing.
While the Greens were themselves upwardly mobile that season – and eventually sealed promotion – Vassell proved he was a player worthy of a much higher division as Birmingham City lured him to St Andrews, with Championship football just around the corner.
Immediately, the explosive striker made his mark in the second tier, with his direct nature leaving defenders in knots, as well as scoring in the 1-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday in just his fifth league game for the club.
But while the frontman burst out of the blocks, his body wasn’t quite up to the rigors of Championship football, with torn cruciate ligaments in his knee ruling him out from October 2017 until the end of the season, with his next appearance in January 2019
Although he still had the same attacking intent, things never fully recovered for Vassell, who left for Cardiff City the following summer, although just two substitutes in three years tell their own tale of his time in Wales.
When he was firing on all cylinders, there was a time when the wide man was almost unplayable and if he had stayed at Argyle things could have been very different for both player and club.
However, Vassell proved how to overcome setbacks in a footballer’s early career and proved the Pilgrims wrong after their early verdict.