Burnley
Blackburn Rovers
Coventry City
Derby County
Leeds United
Luton Town
Middlesbrough
Millwall
Norwich City
Portsmouth
Sheffield Wednesday
Sheffield United
QPR
Morgan Rogers may have begun his career at West Brom, but he insists he doesn’t feel bad about playing for their Midlands rivals, Aston Villa, now.
While derbies across Merseyside, Manchester, London, and the North East may get all the headlines among the footballing calendar, it’s worth remembering how fierce the rivalries are between the clubs in the Midlands.
Ask any West Brom fan and they’ll tell you how much they despise Wolves, Aston Villa, and Birmingham City. Just because none of those teams are in the Championship right now, that doesn’t make the animosity any weaker, either.
For Morgan Rogers, his relatively short career has seen him feature for two of those teams — albeit with plenty of other moves in between — and he’s now discussed how he feels about the whole situation.
Morgan Rogers plays down guilt for split loyalties
Rogers was undergoing a lie detector test as part of a chat with Rising Ballers, and he offered the perfect response to a very tough question indeed: Does he feel guilty about playing for Villa as a West Brom boy?
Rogers denied feeling guilty, but the detector claimed he was lying. The 22-year-old explained himself, though, saying: “I don’t know if guilt is the wrong word… Yes, I have a love for West Brom. Obviously it’s the team that I grew up playing for from a young age.
“I have a love there, but I don’t know that I’m guilty. Football is football. It is what it is. But yeah, definitely there’s love there. It’s not like I don’t care about West Brom and forget about them. It’s not that at all. I love everything about my time there; the coaches, the staff, the players. It’s a big part of me but time moves on.”
In fairness to Rogers, he was signed by Manchester City from the West Brom youth team in 2019. From there, he went on loan to Lincoln City, Bournemouth, and Blackpool. He then signed for Middlesbrough in the summer of 2023, before joining Villa seven months later.
So, it’s not like he abandoned West Brom and immediately joined their rivals. It was four-and-a-half years later, and a lot had happened in that time.
The best Championship graduates in the Premier League right now
While Morgan Rogers only had a short stint in the Championship with Middlesbrough, he did enough during his loan spell to prove that he was ready for more. What he has achieved at Villa since has shown that he was no flash in the pan, too.
You would have to name Rogers in any conversation about the best players to be impressing in the top flight having earned their stripes in the second tier.
Amad Diallo — who was on loan at Sunderland before breaking through at Manchester United — is certainly up there, too, though his season has been cut short by injury now.
You can also look at the likes of Ebere Eze (previously at QPR), Morgan Gibbs-White (previously at Sheffield United), and Jarrod Bowen (previously at Hull City) as established Premier League stars who cut their teeth in the Championship.
There are plenty of players who have had similar success in jumping up a division. However, there’s a valid argument that Rogers is the most exciting and in-form of the lot right now.