I didn't make it at Man City - but now I can show Pep Guardiola what he is missing

There are two trends developing in Morgan Rogers flourishing career.

First, of proving people wrong and taking his chance with both hands when it comes. Second, of playing so well in a particular cup tie that the opposition spend millions to sign him.

That happened in the FA Youth Cup in 2019, when Manchester City were so impressed with a young Rogers that they coughed up £4m to bring him in. Fast forward a few years, after he had left the City Football Academy for Middlesbrough, where an FA Cup tie vs Aston Villa prompted Unai Emery to make a £15m move and Rogers has never looked back.

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He had spoken of a reluctance to leave West Brom, his boyhood club, when Txiki Begiristain came calling with his chequebook in 2019, but told the Manchester Evening News last year that deep down there was only one choice.

"In the back of my head I knew it was the right thing for my career and something I could never turn down," he said. It was a bit weird but ultimately I knew I had to do it and it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity. As much as I would have loved to stay at home and be around people I grew up with, I knew for my career I had to take myself out of my comfort zone."

Rogers quickly justified his decision, standing out in City's big-name youth team under current Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca. Of that Youth Cup-winning team in 2019, Rogers, Cole Palmer, Tommy Doyle, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Liam Delap and James McAtee are all playing Premier League football, with the matchday squad earning City around £100m between them in subsequent transfer fees.

Rogers is a close friend with Palmer, inspiring his 'Cold Palmer' celebration, while he is also friends with fellow Black Country star Jude Bellingham. With so many City graduates doing well elsewhere, questions are naturally being asked about why the club are letting them go.

The irony is that Rogers didn't really make City any money, yet he is perhaps on track to have the best career from the group behind Palmer. Signed for £4m, he left for Middlesbrough for a loss in 2023, before the £15m switch to Villa shortly after. A 25 per cent sell-on clause means City will roughly break even on the player.

Yet his success story could be worth millions in the future when other clubs look at buying the next generation of academy graduates before selling them on for a hefty profit. Even those who look stuck out on loan - Rogers was in League One with Blackpool before joining Boro - can generate massive transfer fees in future.

Playing for Villa was not Plan A for Rogers - and not just because he is a born-and-bred West Brom boy.

"My ultimate goal is to play for City's first team and to do that I have got to take myself out of my comfort zone and go and experience things and improve in certain areas, toughen up and do all these things to try and improve my game to the level I want to get to," he said in his MEN interview while on loan at Blackpool.

"I am not there yet, I hope one day I can be, but the only way to do that is to step out of my comfort zone and go on loan. Each time I have done it I think I needed it to improve my game and to play."

As we know, Rogers didn't fulfil his City dream, but his incredible year at Villa since joining in January has more than made up for it. He's an England international and a Champions League regular.

And City hold no regrets over how things worked out. In fact, they are incredibly proud of another homegrown talent on the biggest stage.

When Rogers reunited with Pep Guardiola last season, the City boss told him something that we rarely hear in the media. “It was like a sense of relief [for him]. Everything he knew I had, he saw it in me," Rogers told the Guardian in August. "It didn’t quite work when I was there but he saw it here [Villa] and that was kind of a big thing for me because it showed how far I’d come, how I’d worked it out and got better and grown up.

"That will stick with me because it was like I’d finally done what he saw, what he wanted. It [being at City] might not have been the most successful part of my career but it helped mould and develop me into the player I am now.”

It wasn't just training with City's world class first-team that moulded Rogers. He admits that he was initially starstruck when he joined senior training, telling the MEN: "Once you go you don't really want to go back to the other pitch and train with your own age group! You try your best and hope you get recognised and you will do, one thing about City is that if you do well you stay there.

"You will get rewarded. It is about how you train, if you impress you stay. You are not there for the numbers. Anyone would bite your hand off to be in that position so I am lucky in that sense."

On the other hand, a tricky spell at Bournemouth and a relegation scrap at Blackpool showed him the importance of playing game-by-game and fighting for every point, every ball.

Rogers has already moved again following his City exit and while that chat with Guardiola was cathartic for both parties, he would love nothing more than to compound their current problems with a starring role at Villa Park on Saturday.

If he scores, you can probably guess what celebration he will do, too.