It has been confirmed that loanee Frankie Okoronkwo has left the Imps and joined fellow League One side Doncaster Rovers on loan.
The 21-year-old was on loan from Everton, having joined at the tail end of the transfer window, and turned out 20 times for City. Only three of those outings were league starts and, on one of those starts, against Doncaster, he scored his only League One goal.
Firstly, I had an issue with the name on the shirt. This is tongue in cheek, but he preferred Frankie to Francis, yet his shirt had Francis on, not Okoronkwo or Frankie. For a bit of a pedant like me, that was triggering. Still, I have no issue with your first name on your shirt if your skills back it up.
I am not sure Frankie showed that his did during his time here. He was not a bad loan, but he was not a great one either. We are talking Liam Cullen over Luke Plange, maybe Dan N’Lundulu over Ben Hutchinson. I did not have a reason to dislike him, but I never felt he was the answer to any questions we got asked.
I do not want to be harsh, as his application and work rate were good, and had he stayed, he would have been a decent squad player. But in truth, he turned in maybe three performances that we thought were good. I remember Mansfield at home, where he did well, and Doncaster at home for his goal. Outside of that, I am not sure he ever really stood out.
Stats-wise, he outscored his xG, two goals to a 1.74 xG, which is not bad, and he was used in a variety of positions, from the ten and nine to those attacking wide areas. His shooting was a bit wayward, and I remember him firing over a few times, one of those against Barnsley in the game he later scored in. His shot accuracy was 25%, whereas Freddie Draper, by comparison, is 36.4%. Watching clips back, the away game at Bradford probably summed his potency in front of goal up, with scuffed efforts the sum of his endeavours.
Frankie is not a bad player, and I suggested that if he did leave us, bottom-end League One might be his level. He has got a good attitude, he will muck in and fight, but I expected a little more quality from a player on loan from the top flight. He did not really settle here, he never made a position his own, and that is as much on us as him. I think he was always going to be cover, and his output reflects that. When he came on, he did okay, but if he started, I rarely felt he was going to be a game-changer.
There is zero surprise he has left, and he does so without malice. When some loan players leave, like Plange and, to a degree, N’Lundulu, you wonder exactly what the future holds for them. I do not have that with Frankie. I think the future holds League One football, maybe bouncing between that and the top end of League Two. However, he would need to seriously sharpen those striker instincts if he were ever to play regular football higher than where he has been for the last six months.
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