The Derby County decision that Eiran Cashin must make as Wayne Rooney plots January raid: Opinion | OneFootball

Highlights

Managers often like the comfort and security of recruiting in familiar territory and that's exactly what Wayne Rooney is mooting upon his appointment at Birmingham City.

It's been a busy old few days at St Andrews', with the club parting ways with highly-regarded boss John Eustace amid a vast upturn in fortunes on and off-the-pitch that has seen them threaten the play-off pack, leading to unsurprising adversity from the Blues faithful.

Not many managers have been able to galvanise the club and reinstall a feel-good factor in this side of the Second City in recent years, but that's what Eustace was able to do and he's now put high standards in place as a result.

It's up to Rooney to meet those, and it could prove his undoing as he'll be constantly up against a comparison and defined by the success of his predecessor.

It may not, though, and he's already putting the gears in motion to avoid just that by eyeing a quadruple raid on his former club Derby County.

TEAMtalk have revealed that Rooney is seeking to reunite with Rams quartet Liam Thompson, Louie Sibley, Max Bird, and Eiran Cashin, all of whom featured and thrived under his tuition as the East Midlands club were relegated from the Championship in the 2021/22 season amid ongoing administration peril.

Financial constraints married with the decimation of the playing squad provided a platform for Derby's vaunted youth system to prosper as numerous prospects were licensed with a window of opportunity to prove their worth at the first-team level, and those four most certainly took it.

Various degrees of success have accompanied them since, but they're still at Derby in League One.

Nonetheless, the common denominator between Thompson, Sibley, and Bird is that they simply can't match up to Cashin, who has quite arguably established himself as one of the Football League's most promising, high-potential young defenders.

It's little wonder he's earned such interest, and while he may find it difficult to part ways with the club that gave him an opportunity in the game, he should be looking to reunite with the manager who gave him an opportunity in the game, too.

Why should Derby County's Eiran Cashin reunite with Wayne Rooney at Birmingham City?

Put simply, Cashin is a cut above the third tier of English football.

A dominant central defender who loves a challenge, reads the game excellently, possesses leadership qualities, wins his duels at both ends of the pitch, and is even comfortable playing the ball out and progressing upfield, Cashin truly ticks all the necessary boxes for a player in his position - and at the age of 21, he'll still only improve too.

Rooney should be all over those attributes, and he'll know better than most just what Cashin is capable of both in the immediate and long term.

He should be looking to leverage his relations with the Republic of Ireland international, although the player himself must really try and engineer a January switch across the Midlands as well.

He's too good for Derby and the level they're playing at and if there's an option on the table to progress up the pyramid and, in turn, progress his career, there's no real reason why he shouldn't take it.

Naturally, much will lean upon Derby's promotion probability and just how they're looking on that front at the start of 2024, but it's difficult to see the Rams surfacing as dead certs anytime soon.

The prodigy would also have no difficulty in immediately stamping down his authority on this Blues side; he didn't look out of place one bit after being thrown in the deep end two years prior and, all things considered, he's a better and more sustainable option than 33-year-old Kevin Long, who has seldom put a foot wrong but pales in quality and room for improvement.

Those factors should tempt Cashin, as should the fact that Birmingham have an objective to return to the Premier League under their fresh Stateside ownership and that ambition likely aligns with the player's own, too.