'Be ready' - Sunderland boss issues first-team challenge to Ben Crompton and Harrison Jones

Graeme Murty has challenged Harrison Jones and Ben Crompton to push their case and “be ready” for first-team involvement this season.

Both Jones and Crompton have played for Sunderland’s senior side under Régis Le Bris this pre-season and have enjoyed first-team involvement in previous campaigns. The pair featured against Bradford City at Valley Parade last Tuesday.

Crompton has played for Sunderland in the Carabao Cup whilst Jones made the bench several times in the Championship last season. Both players dropped back down to the under-21s to face Hebburn Town on Thursday evening with Murty’s side emerging 2-1 winners during the pre-season friendly.

Murty, however, has challenged Jones, Crompton and other experienced under-21 payers at the Academy of Light to stake their claim for first-team inclusion and to be ready if head coach Le Bris needs to call upon them during the 2024-25 campaign.

“They're under-21s players at the moment and they need to make sure that they excel,” Murty told The Echo after the Hebburn Town win. “So our challenge always to the younger players, whichever age group they're going to be in, if they want to make that next step they have to be the best player in training, they have to be the best player in game and they have to be ready whatever opportunity comes. 

“So if they are the next man up, for example, into the 21s as JaydonJones has been and Jack Whittaker has been from the under-18s, they have been ready to go and if we get the call that someone's going to go and train with the first team our young players need to be ready and they need to go and make sure that they show themselves really well.

“I think overall in pre-season those players who've gone and trained with the first team have done themselves quite proud but they need to make that next step and they need to not bounce between the two. We would rather they were that good that it becomes a permanent movement but that's for them to go and excel and the first team to say, actually I wouldn't stay here.”