City Interested in Young Bournemouth Prodigy

The Imps and a number of other clubs are reportedly interested in signing AFC Bournemouth youngster Baylin Johnson on a loan deal, according to the The72.

Luke Phelps, journalist for The72, revealed on Twitter that the Imps are one of many clubs interested in Johnson, with others including Belgian outfit K.V. Oostende and Austrian outfit Rapid Wien, as well as fellow EFL side Stockport County all chasing a loan deal for the 17-year-old. Johnson was born in 2005 (yes 2005, you are reading that correctly), and spent ten years as a youngster at Arsenal before joining up with Bournemouth in 2020, he’s yet to make his debut at the Vitality Stadium but is certainly held in high regard by the Cherries and a number of scouts both across England and overseas.

He spent part of last season on loan with Dorchester Town in the Southern League Premier South, the seventh tier of English Football. On the surface, this may not seem impressive but as is the case with lots of young players, it was simply a work experience loan to get him playing some sort of men’s football at an extremely young age of 16, off the top of my head, I believe we did it with Morgan Worsfold-Gregg last year, it’s just part of the process, especially when they are 16/17. After returning from his loan, featuring four times in total, he gained his first professional contract with Bournemouth and it now seems that the Cherries are looking for the player to gain experience at a good level of professional football.

Johnson is an attack minded player, and is described on the official Bournemouth website as: “A versatile frontman Baylin Johnson can operate on either wing or as a striker“. With the player being so young and lacking any real football experience at senior level, information is quite hard to come by but from my hour or so of researching him, he looks to be an attacker that goes to beat his man and get towards goal. From clips I’ve seen, he has a good technique when striking a ball and in the tweet above, you can see an example of that with a peach of a finish for the Bournemouth academy. We need direct wingers who look to take on a man and contribute to the team with goals and assists, and he could provide us with that air of uncertainty in the final third.

The player himself is obviously very unknown, so I’m not going to sit here and say he’s going to change our fortunes and drive us to promotion, but he is very clearly rated by Bournemouth and a bunch of other clubs, who have registered their interest. Signing young players from the loan market can be a risk, but as we’ve seen in the past it can work, just look at that last Johnson we got on loan, if he even has half the impact the last one did, then we’ll be in for a good signing I’d say.