Peterborough United co-owner raves about Ronnie, a Premier League star of the future, as Posh tie down a 16 year-old to keep him out of the top flight for now

It would be further proof of Posh’s talent-spotting skills as they signed the central defender for nothing from Barnet in the summer.

Posh sold their Academy’s star goalkeeper Sam Proctor to Premier League Aston Villa for £100k on January 1.

Edwards, who is not 18 until March, was the man-of-the-match on his Football League debut at MK Dons last month, although he’s unlikely to keep his place for the trip to Lincoln City on Saturday after recently being required to self isolate.

MacAnthony said on his ‘Hard Truth’ podcast: “I’ve never seen a young defender like Ronnie before. I wouldn’t be worried if he played every game for the rest of the season.

“In fact if he played the next 10 games for us, the top 10 in the Premier League would be putting bids in before the end of the season.

“If he played for Liverpool now he wouldn’t sweat about it as he’s so composed.

“Ronnie’s attitude and that of his family is great as well. They are football-driven rather than money-driven and I love that.

“We do get offers for our Academy players all the time and sometimes we can’t turn bids down.

“We can’t offer 13 year-olds like Sam a contract and we are restricted on how much we can make.

“We have to weigh up what we can get for a youngster now compared to the likelihood of him making it with us and at 13 it’s difficult to know how a player will develop.

“Sam could have gone to Manchester City or Chelsea as well as Villa, but his parents took their time and worked out what was best for their son and chose Villa.

“We have also sold 12 year-olds recently, but we are aware that to achieve our ambition of half the senior squad being Academy graduates we can’t keep losing our young talent.

“It’s different whan players are a bit older. We have a 16 year-old Portuguese lad (Adler Nascimento) who plays for our under 18s and Wolves and Brighton wanted to take him, but at that age we can protect ourselves by giving him a pre-professional contract which we have done in this case.”

Posh co-owner Jason Neale added “We wish Sam well pursuing his dream. We get offers almost every week for our academy players. Most of the time I just send back a picture of my shredder!”