Exeter City highs and lows will leave mixed Brentford FC feelings over transfers | OneFootball

Exeter City have had a lot of loans this season and two from Brentford, Ryan Trevitt and Tony Yogane, have had differing fortunes.

Hold tight, we're nearly there.

Exeter City have just two games to go until the conclusion of the 2024/25 League One season, and it looks like it's going into the history books with a whimper rather than a bang.

Gary Caldwell's Grecians are sat 16th and will probably finish somewhere between 14th and 17th with two games to go and a maximum of 59 points on offer.

Both the points and league positions are likely to be lower than last season's 13th-placed finish, which saw a topsy-turvy campaign end with a haul of 61 points.

There's been an air of familiarity about how the 2024/25 campaign has played out with early promise replaced by despair in the winter and something of a late rally.

Another similarity has been the return on loan of Brentford's promising attacking midfielder Ryan Trevitt.

Trevitt's second spell not as good as first

He was joined this time by fellow Bee Tony Yogane as Brentford sought to make amends for recalling City's best player this season by a mile, Tristan Crama, who had been called home only to be immediately sold on to Millwall in January after an excellent first half of the campaign.

Trevitt's return was genuinely exciting, and the 22-year-old midfielder had a decent impact in his first spell down in Devon.

He didn't record the same numbers, nor play as many games as Trevitt 1.0 in 24/25, and Grecians had to wait 12 games to see his only goal in what would turn out to be his final game in his second spell at St James Park.

The promising playmaker opened the scoring in the 2-1 away win at Barnsley on April Fool's Day but limped off in the 98th minute with a season-ending injury.

The reduced return mirrored City's poor attacking output, with him grabbing five goals and an assist in 23 appearances in the first half of the 2023/24 season before, you guessed it, an injury cut short his loan spell.

Trevitt is clearly a good young player, but he does seem to have a nasty habit of picking up fairly-serious injuries which could hamper his chances of a career at the very top of the game.

He's certainly good enough for League One already, and you'd expect him to have a long career in the second tier at the very worst.

Yogane has work to do on his game

The same might not be true of his Grecians and Brentford colleague Yogane, though.

The winger is really raw and, to be fair to him, he's just 19 and has taken the brave step of getting out of the academy system and playing some proper competitive football in the EFL, so he certainly deserves credit.

He'll have learned a lot from his stint in the West Country but after a strong start his performances have dipped, and he's now coming in for stick as City limp over the line.

He's got a huge box of tricks but clearly doesn't know when and how to use them to full effect just yet.

Maybe it's Caldwell's stifling tactics, maybe it's his nature, but the teenager would be so much more effective if he just drove at players rather than slowing everything down and letting the opposition get set.

He's registered just one assist and no goals in 16 appearances for the Grecians and that came in the shambolic 6-2 home defeat to Leyton Orient.

His lack of end product is drawing criticism from the stands now and questions are being asked why he's being picked when City should be looking forward to next season.

While you fancy Caldwell would love Trevitt back for a third loan, it's time for him to forge his own path now, whether that's at Brentford or if he makes the decision to leave permanently in the summer.

Yogane is still so young, but he's got so much to learn. He could do a lot worse than sitting down with Trevitt and have a chat about how and when to drive forward and how to pick the right pass.

All loans are a gamble, and Exeter City have had an awful lot of them in the Caldwell era.

In reality, both of these probably have to go down as failures, but both Trevitt and Yogane should have improved from the experience.