Luton Town teenager Dawid Gawel could be handed an opportunity with the senior side before the end of the season after an extraordinary goalscoring campaign for the club’s academy.
The 17-year-old striker has been one of the standout performers in the Hatters’ youth system this year, scoring more than 40 goals for the under-18s and registering over 50 goal involvements when assists are included. His form since arriving from Everton last summer has quickly marked him out as one of the most productive young forwards in his age group.
Gawel has already had a brief taste of senior involvement, appearing from the bench in January’s Vertu Trophy tie against Swindon Town. Although that match initially ended in defeat for Luton before the result was later overturned because the visitors fielded two ineligible players, it provided the Poland-born striker with his first senior minutes.
Ahead of him, Ali Al-Hamadi only returned yesterday from his World Cup qualifying heroics with Iraq so is a doubt for today’s game against Peterborough, while Elijah Adebayo’s season is over and Nahki Wells has missed the last three games, leaving only Devante Cole out of a forward line that has bagged just four league goals this term, all of them from Wells.
Manager Jack Wilshere was asked whether the teenager could be given a chance in League One before the campaign concludes and though he admitted that he’d run the rule over fellow academy product Zach Ioannidis in pre-season, he admitted Gawel’s exceptional season has already placed him firmly on the first-team radar.
“Dawid is maybe slightly different because of how good he’s been all season and the goals he has scored,” the manager said.
“He’s one that we took with us in the international break, we brought him in with the group and I must say he was excellent. He’s a proper number nine, he gives you a threat behind, he gives you a target to play into.
“Of course, there’s still so much more to come and develop, he needs to be around the first team for a longer period, but maybe before the end of the season.
“If he keeps working hard, if he keeps scoring goals in the 18s, probably right now that will be his programme, where he trains with us a little bit more, but he gets his game time in the 18s and then it’s down to me to give him his opportunity.”
Wilshere, who himself broke through to the Arsenal first team as a 16-year-old, has spent time observing the young striker more closely in recent weeks and believes his natural instinct inside the penalty area is one of the most striking aspects of his game.
“He’s good, he needs to work and he needs to develop certain things and get cleaner in certain moments, but I think you can see his natural ability to find space in the box. People say it’s being in the right place at the right time, I don’t believe in that, he works for the space, he gets his timing right, he understands the spaces to attack in the box.
“You can see he’s getting his rewards for that in the 18s, so of course the 18s is different to the first team, there’s more intensity, there’s probably more responsibility on a number nine to hold the ball up.
“I think about my time in the 18s and it is a lot more transitional because maybe you’re trying different things, trying to develop certain things.
“A big part of a young player stepping into the first team is understanding that and improving their decision-making as their decisions really matter at that level.
“I think he can develop that in training as well, and being around first team players and feeling the intensity of that will help him definitely.”
With Luton continuing to search for greater attacking output in the closing weeks of the campaign, Gawel’s remarkable form at youth level has at least opened the door to the possibility that the teenager could soon be given the chance to show what he can do on the senior stage.
Be the first to comment