Signing a wonderkid on FM is one of the best feelings the game can produce. Many wonderkids have fulfilled their potential. However, many haven’t managed to live up to expectations.
John Bostock has signed up for 24/25 , have 𝘆𝗼𝘂?
Secure your Season Ticket for our National League campaign ⤵️
— Solihull Moors FC (@SolihullMoors) July 29, 2024
One player who falls into the latter category, John Bostock, has moved on this summer as he joined National League outfit Solihull Moors. The midfielder has signed a two-year deal with the West Midlands club.
Who is John Bostock?
Younger readers will be forgiven for not knowing who John Bostick is and why the FM community should be interested in him.
At the start of his career, Bostock was considered to be one of English football’s brightest prospects. He broke through into the Crystal Palace first-team at just 15 and was a wonderkid in several editions of the game in the early 2010s.
As is often the case with promising young players, he wasn’t with his original club for long. In 2008, Palace’s London rivals, Tottenham, were forced to spend £700,000 to acquire his services at a tribunal.
The move should have been a big step in his development, as Tottenham have done a fine job of developing youngsters over the years.
Bostock was contracted to the north London club until 2013. However, the midfielder failed to appear for Spurs in the Premier League, with his only first-team experiences with the club coming in the UEFA Cup.
In a substitute appearance against Dinamo Zagreb, Bostock made history by becoming the youngest player ever to appear for Spurs at the age of 16 years and 295 days.
He then endured unsuccessful loan spells at Brentford, Hull City, Sheffield Wednesday, Swindon Town and Toronto.
Made an impact in Belgium.
Having struggled to establish himself in north London, Bostock left Tottenham as a free agent when his contract expired in June 2013.
A switch to Belgian second-tier Royal Antwerp was rather more fruitful. He became the team’s main creative force, producing 16 assists in his debut campaign.
The following summer, he joined newly relegated OH Leuven after Antwerp failed to secure promotion to the Belgian top flight.
He was more prolific with OHL in his debut campaign, scoring 13 goals and producing 19 assists, as his team won promotion via the play-offs. His performances won Bostock the second-tier Player of the Year award.
His maiden campaign in the Belgian top flight was also pretty successful, as he scored seven times in 25 appearances in the Belgian Pro League.
Bostock’s performances for OHL attracted interest from elsewhere. In the summer of 2016, he joined the French Ligue 2 team Lens. It finally appeared that Bostock was starting to fulfil his potential.
The start of a nomadic spell
After a strong first season with Lens, where he scored five times and was awarded the French second-tier Player of the Year award, his career seemed to go downhill.
He made just 11 appearances for Lens in his second season with the club. In January 2018, Bostock was on the move, this time to Turkish team Bursaspor.
Having featured just eight times for the club, he returned to French football the following summer, signing for Ligue One outfit Toulouse.
During his second spell in France, the midfielder was sent out on loan to Championship Nottingham Forest, where he once again failed to have much of an impact.
After an uneventful spell, Bostock was released from his Toulouse contract in October 2020. His next stop was at League One Doncaster Rovers, who he joined on an 18-month deal in January 2021.
Over the next two seasons, the midfielder made 39 league appearances for the Yorkshire outfit. He left at the end of season 2021/22 when Rovers suffered relegation to the English third tier.
It took Bostock until November 2022 for him to find a club. Instead of staying with Doncaster and playing League Two football, his next stop was National League Notts County, where he signed a two-year deal.
The midfielder helped the Magpies win promotion to League Two through the National League play-offs. The following season, Bostock made 37 appearances for County in the English fourth tier, the most league appearances the midfielder has ever made in one campaign.
However, Notts County released Bostock at the end of season 2023/24, when his contract expired. On June 27th, 2024, Bostock returned to the National League with Solihull Moors at the age of 31.
Why hasn’t he fulfilled his FM potential?
Football Manager scouts and those responsible for producing the games database do their best with the data they have on players.
Even in our now technologically digital world, it’s not easy to get much information on young players looking to build a career in the beautiful game.
The most important factor in a player not fulfilling their supposed potential is the home one. Many things can affect a player’s career. They are only human like the rest of us, so it’s difficult to predict how their careers will go.
Also, potential is only an educated guess. The guys at SI are not psychic, after all. If they were, they would be sitting on a beach with a nice beverage, having picked the right numbers in a lottery or a football accumulator.
Despite people claiming he hasn’t fulfilled his potential, John Bostock has still enjoyed a decent football career, experienced different lifestyles and cultures, and been paid for the privilege.
Spending time in Belgium, France, or Turkey doesn’t sound like a bad life to me. Only the man himself knows whether he has been happy with his football career so far.
However, one thing is for sure he isn’t the first FM wonderkid to supposedly not reach their potential, and he certainly won’t be the last for sure.
Do you remember John Bostock being an FM wonderkid?
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