End-of-season loan round-up

The last appearance by one of our on-loan players took place over the Bank Holiday weekend as Josh Onomah suffered Championship play-off final heartbreak with Aston Villa at Wembley.

The young midfielder’s 37th appearance of a gruelling campaign with Villa came in their most important game of them all but, sadly for Josh, who came on as a 77th-minute substitute with his side looking for a way back into the contest against Fulham, it wasn’t to be as Steve Bruce’s men succumbed to a 1-0 defeat on Saturday.

Josh had been back in frequent action during the final few weeks of the regular Championship season, starting three of Villa’s last four games as they secured a play-off berth with a fourth place finish. Included in that run was a 4-0 victory away to Cameron Carter-Vickers’ Ipswich Town, a game which saw Josh bag two assists.

Centre-back Cameron, a regular for Ipswich since January, played one further match on loan for the Tractor Boys – a 2-2 home draw with Middlesbrough on the last day of the season – which took his overall total number of appearances for them to 17. Ipswich were 12th in the final reckoning.

Left-back Connor Ogilvie was on the bench for Gillingham’s last couple of games in League One, but played an important role over the course of the campaign with 42 appearances and one goal in all competitions as his side finished 17th.

After starting for Southend United in a 3-0 victory at Oldham Athletic in late April, striker Shayon Harrison made the last of his 13 appearances for the Shrimpers on the final day of the League One season as a late substitute in a goalless home draw with Bristol Rovers. Southend finished 10th, two places behind Portsmouth, for whom defender Anton Walkes had impressed since January. Unfortunately, the versatile former Atlanta United right-back missed the last few weeks of the campaign through injury, but still mustered one goal in 12 appearances during his loan spell.

Another young player who won plenty of plaudits with his loan club since January was midfielder Luke Amos. He scored twice in 16 appearances for Stevenage as they finished 16th in League Two, the last of his games coming in a 2-1 home win over Bank Holiday Monday’s losing play-off finalists, Exeter City, in Boro’s penultimate fixture of the campaign. Young striker Ryan Loft, on loan at fourth placed Exeter, wasn’t involved in their showpiece match against Coventry City at Wembley, but had been back on the bench for their last regular season outing, a 1-0 home win against Colchester United.

In the Premier League, winger Georges-Kevin Nkoudou made eight appearances as Burnley secured a Europa League spot for 2018-19 by way of a seventh place finish. He featured off the bench against Brighton and Arsenal in the closing weeks of the season.

Overseas, Tom Glover continued to serve as 10th placed Central Coast Mariners’ substitute goalkeeper in the Australian A-League during the closing weeks of the season while striker Vincent Janssen marked his comeback from a long-term injury lay-off with two goals in Fenerbahce’s final five games of the campaign – all of which they won – as they finished as runners-up to Galatasaray in the Turkish Super Lig. He also featured as a late substitute in his side’s 3-2 defeat to Akhisarspor in the Turkish Cup Final on 10 May, making it five goals in 18 appearances over the course of the season for the Dutch international.