Blues boss Paul Jewell says Academy Player of the Year Gunnar Thorsteinsson is if anything too focused on making it as a professional footballer. The 18-year-old Icelander is likely to feature in next season’s new U21 league, an aspect of the EPPP that the Town manager doesn’t particularly welcome.
Thorsteinsson received his gong at last week’s End of Season Dinner but Jewell thought he was far from the youngest looking award winner: "When he went up there on Tuesday I thought Cressy had won the Academy Player of the Year because Cressy looks younger than him!
"He’s done well, he’s a terrific professional. He lives, eats and breathes football. He’s one where you think ‘get a life, you boring bastard!’," he joked.
"I had a word with him because you can get too intense. He wants it so much, he trains hard, he’s got a fantastic attitude.
"The award wasn’t just for playing, it was for being a scholar in general. They have to go to school and it's for the way they are about the place, their manners, so there was the whole package taken into consideration and it’s a credit to him and his family that he’s won it.
"He’s a talented boy, he plays the guitar, he’s good looking, he’s got a lot going for him. If he had a yard of pace he’d be all right!”
Midfielder or defender Thorsteinsson joined the club last summer after coming through the ranks at Icelandic club Grindavik, where his dad Thorsteinn Gunnarsson is the chairman, making two senior appearances in 2009 and becoming their youngest-ever first team player in the process.
His father has been an avid Town fan since childhood and passed his passion for the Blues on to his son.
Despite his success in his first year as a scholar, Jewell says the Icelandic U17 international is not in line for an early elevation to the senior side: "He’s not ready for the first team squad yet.”
Having made a handful of reserve appearances in the ad hoc friendlies the Blues have played this season, Thorsteinsson will hope to be a regular in next season’s new U21 league. Town will enter the competition as a result of committing to Category Two in the EPPP reorganisation of youth football.
Jewell isn’t a big fan believing that if players are good enough they should join the ranks of the first teamers rather than being seen as part of an U21 squad: "It’s like me saying to Byron Lawrence, who’s 16, that he’ll have to go into the development group.
"If they’re ready to go into the first team and play with the first team, they should do that, they develop far better.
"I think what’s going to happen, and this is only my view, is that we’ll end up keeping players for the sake of it.
"I don’t want to just keep players so we meet the criteria for the U21 league. For me, that’s not the right way to do it.
"I think if you’re training with the U21 group at 18 or 19 or 20, I’m not sure it develops you that well, but they’re the rules, so we’ve got to abide by them.”
Jewell doesn’t believe the players will be sufficiently tested in the new U21 league despite the likelihood that clubs will be able to field two or three overage players: "We’re going to be able to test ourselves against the U21s of who? Colchester? Even the Premier League sides, why do we want to play against U21 teams from the Premier League?
"I think if you’ve got young players playing against men, from the Premier League or Colchester, it’s far more beneficial to them than playing on a level playing field.”