I watched Sunderland U21s lose to Sheffield United - this player is more than ready for the first team

At this point, it is not exactly a revelatory statement to make, but there really is something freakishly reminiscent of Jack Clarke about Tommy Watson. If you were to wander along to the Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground on any given Sunderland U21s match day having left your glasses at home and with no prior knowledge of the emerging winger, you may even be forgiven for thinking that the Black Cats had somehow managed to clone their now-departed talisman before begrudgingly packing him off to Ipswich Town.

It’s right there - at first glance in his slightness of frame and wiry limbs, his shock of blonde hair - but then, you realise, also in his movement and motion too; the way that he sidles up to his full-back before wielding his right boot like a rapier, the manner in which he leaves defenders wobbling about all over the shop like newborn giraffes, the unavoidable insistence with which he darts in from the left flank and flashes his efforts toward that waiting far post.

On Friday night, as Sunderland lost their opening Premier League Cup group stage fixture against Sheffield United, Watson did not have his most effective game in red and white. Certainly, he did not score at the end of a mazy, befuddling run like he did against Liverpool a few days earlier, nor did he find a teammate with any of his many tempting cut-backs from the byline. And yet, he still looked absolutely sublime at times. Even at his most ordinary, Watson is an extraordinary talent.

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Assistant coach John Hewitson perhaps summed it up best after the final whistle. “Tommy was unplayable,” he told the Echo. “At times they doubled up on him - if not trebled up on him.” And increasingly, at U21 level, these are the measures that teams are having to resort to if they are to quell Watson for any sustained period of time. In other words, he looks to be rapidly outgrowing developmental football.

Of course, it is no great secret that the 18-year-old is on a steep trajectory towards the first team at the Stadium of Light. Regis Le Bris has named him in each of his last two Championship match day squads, and the young attacker was handed a nine-minute cameo in last month’s EFL Cup defeat against Preston North End. Even outside of the North East, Watson is garnering attention; according to reports, Brighton and Hove Albion - renowned for their scouting prowess, as they are - failed with a bid to prise him away from Wearside in the latter stages of the summer transfer window.

But with every passing week and every passing exhibition of his obvious pedigree, it becomes more and more apparent that Watson is agonisingly close to being ready to make the step up to the senior game on a permanent basis. Some would argue he is already there. Romaine Mundle’s ascent in the wake of Clarke’s departure means that a regular starting berth is likely to be beyond the academy graduate for a while to come, but it is also worth remembering that the former Tottenham Hotspur man is only 21 himself, and the pressures of an entire Championship campaign will likely necessitate the need for rotation and rest at certain points in the calendar.

In those moments, Watson has shown more than enough to suggest that he should be afforded the opportunity to prove his worth to Le Bris’ project, as the likes of fellow teenagers Chris Rigg and Eliezer Mayenda have before him. What’s more, if the strength of his weekly clinics at Eppleton are any kind of reliable indicator, there is every likelihood that he will make good on those chances too.