Life at Man City
Rogers rose through the ranks at West Brom, eventually making his professional debut for the club in a FA Cup fifth round replay against Brighton in February 2019 – while he was still at school. “He excelled in that game,” remembers Tait.
But it was during the Baggies’ run to the FA Youth Cup semi-finals in the same year that got Rogers his next big break. The forward appeared in the last four clash away at Manchester City, who were so impressed they signed the forward in the following summer transfer window.
“I didn’t want him to go to Man City. I thought he should have stayed at West Brom and learnt his trade a bit,” adds Tait.
“When you join a club the size of Man City, or Man Utd and Liverpool, players can get swallowed up when there are so many other fantastic players already. And then what is the pathway for the youngsters at these clubs? Is there even a pathway?”
Well, that pathway looked like two years in the City academy teams before undergoing a ‘loan map’ in the EFL. His first move was a very successful one in League with Lincoln City, where he worked under Michael Appleton. From the first minute, he showed no fear.
“We were not the biggest team and I remember there were a couple of games where we were thinking about the opposition and who to pick up,” Appleton tells Sky Sports.
“And he just said, ‘Put me on their biggest player. I will do the job.’ He genuinely meant it. He had so much belief.”
Rogers played as a winger or No 10, with Brennan Johnson, on loan from Nottingham Forest at the time, on the other wing. Word got round in the third tier about Lincoln’s dynamic duo that were firing the club towards the top of the table.
When Barry-Murphy took his Rochdale team to Lincoln in March 2021, he had to come up with a plan to keep Rogers and Johnson.
“The two of them in League One were causing a lot of problems because of how direct and skilful they were in wide areas,” Barry-Murphy tells Sky Sports. “It wouldn’t have been the norm to come up against two young talents of that calibre.
“Essentially, our strategy on the day – and I remember it well – was to take them back towards their own goal as much as possible because every game that we had watched, they showed they were pretty lethal even at that age.”
It almost worked. Rochdale managed to beat Lincoln that day 2-1 – but only after Rogers levelled the game at 1-1 in the second half, beating three players by driving at the Dale penalty area before rifling a shot into the top corner.
It was one of six goals Rogers scored for the League One outfit that season, firing Lincoln to the play-off final in the process. But he and Lincoln ended up losing to Blackpool at Wembley – and that disappointment would be the start of a couple of challenging years on the pitch.
