Jacob Brown is a better prospect for Barnsley than the man he replaced in the side, Brad Potts, says his agent and former Reds captain Brian Howard.
Potts’ sale to Preston North End in January has allowed Brown the first consistent run of starts of his career during which he has impressed on the right wing as the team moved up to second in League One. Howard, who became an agent after retiring, recently negotiated a new deal for the 20-year-old which is due to keep him at Oakwell until 2021.
Howard told the Chronicle: “Jacob is a very hard-working young lad and a great person. He’s got a very supportive family around him. Sometimes you forget how young he is and that he has had a lot of injuries. He has come into first team football quite late.
“When Brad Potts left people might have thought that Barnsley were selling all their best players again. But Jacob has done as good a job if not better. He certainly has more future potential. His athleticism gets him in a lot of good positions at right wing to get goals and assists.
“The sky is the limit with him and he has the potential to reach the top level. “He knows he’s not the finished article and he’s got a lot of things to work on. We’d never let him get carried away and think he’s bigger than he is because of the season he’s having, but he’s not like that anyway. He is 100 per cent at the right club to develop him.”
Brown’s career has progressed significantly in the last year as he was on loan at Chesterfield during their relegation into non-league football in the second half of last season. Howard believes that loan helped him and explains it nearly didn’t happen.
He said: “I had a few options for him on deadline day in January last year but Barnsley didn’t know if they were going to get Oli McBurnie in so they didn’t want to let Jacob go. Then they got McBurnie and I had three hours to find Jacob a club. I managed to get him to Chesterfield and he got a lot of experience at right wing which is really helping him now.”
Howard is also an agent for other Barnsley youngsters Jared Bird, Jake Greatorex and Tommy Willard while the company he founded in 2017, Momentum Sports, represents several more high-profile players including Aston Villa’s Conor Hourihane who, like Howard, captained Barnsley to promotion. The Reds are going for another promotion this season and Howard believes they can do it.
He said: “I like Barnsley a lot as a team. I went to the Gillingham match (a 4-1 win last month) and someone asked me if this team reminds me of the promotion team I played in. I think there are definitely similarities. Daniel Stendel has them playing free-flowing, attacking football which is like the way we played under Andy Ritchie. It’s also a young squad with a really good team spirit, which is what we had as well.”
Many of Howard’s former Reds team-mates are now coaching at Oakwell such as academy manager Bobby Hassell and under 23s boss Martin Devaney as well as Dale Tonge who has recently been promoted from under 16s coach to the assistant to head coach Stendel.
He said: “Bobby and Davvers are doing a great job in the academy. I always thought they would both make good coaches. I didn’t really expect Tongie to be involved in first team management so soon but he’s doing a really good job. I had a good chat with him at Portsmouth and he’s really enjoying it. He’s great around the lads, a very good coach and he has a good relationship with the gaffer.”
Howard was at Barnsley’s draw in Portsmouth on Saturday and is looking forward to the rest of the promotion race.
“It was an entertaining 0-0, with two teams playing to win in a really good atmosphere. It’s going to be a really exciting promotion race. The game against Sunderland will be huge. Sunderland are such a big club with big expectations so the pressure might get to them a bit but, talking to the lads I know at Barnsley, they are all just enjoying it and not feeling the pressure at all.”
