Express & Star

Wolves recall loanee quartet

Wolves have recalled under-21s quartet Harvey Griffiths, Alfie Pond, Tyler Roberts and Oliver Tipton from their season-long loan spells.

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Alfie Pond (Getty)

The youngsters were all sent out on their first loan deals in the summer and had varying degrees of success.

Griffiths played just three times in all competitions for Walsall and managed just 13 minutes of League Two action, while Pond featured nine times for Stockport.

Tipton played seven times for Notts County, while Roberts played 15 times in all competitions for Doncaster.

Pathways manager Steve Davis said: “It’s been mixed for them all and they’ve all had different experiences of the clubs they’ve been at – whether that’s the way they’re run, the position they’re in the league, how the players around them have dealt with that and the environment that they’ve set.

“You learn as a development player just how crucial it is, how reliable you have to be and how much pressure there is in that environment.

“In terms of the loans themselves, they’ve probably not all had the game time as they would’ve envisaged at the time, but they learn other things. They learn about the dressing room, the training ground and how professional players approach things. Lots of learning is done in that short space of time.”

Griffiths and Pond cannot be loaned out to another EFL club in the second half of the campaign after both making their senior debuts for Wolves off the bench in the Carabao Cup win over Blackpool in August, but Tipton and Roberts could have another loan this season.

Davis added: “They’re all different and we’ll treat them all individually. For Harvey and Pondy, they can’t be loaned back out because they’ve played for the first-team and been on loan, so that counts as two loans and regulations stipulate that they can’t go out, but Tippo and Tinks (Roberts) can go back out.

“We can loan lower so we can look for options in the National League if we think that’s the right thing to do. It might be that we think they’ll benefit more playing 21s football, being the best player in the 21s and then seeing where that takes them for the summer. They all have different needs and we’ll make different decisions on them.”