By Gary Baker

FORMER Forest Green striker Adie Mings insists hard work will see his son reach the Premier League.

Defender Tyrone Mings is one of the hottest targets in the Championship at the moment and has been tracked by several clubs over the past couple of months, all looking for a multi-million pound transfer from his current team Ipswich Town.

Indeed, Arsenal are said to be particularly keen on the six feet five inch, 21-year-old left-back, with talk that Gunners manager Arsene Wenger would be more than happy to spend £8 million to entice Mings from Portman Road to the Emirates Stadium.

But Mings’ father Adie, who is working in a scouting capacity for Chelsea and had a playing career that involved spells at Forest Green Bath City before becoming director of football at Chippenham Town, said his son was going nowhere this season but any transfer away from Ipswich would come in the summer.

Adie reckons that Tyrone, who played for Yate Town after being released from a footballing scholarship with Southampton, has the skills to make it big in the Premier League when, as it seems, he eventually gets snapped up to play in the highest division.

Adie said: “He’s got all the attributes to play at the top level. He has done okay so far, but there is a lot of hard work which has gone into it and he has shown a lot of mental strength to come back from rejections.”

One of the biggest ironies of all is that Mings started for Ipswich in their 1-1 FA Cup third round draw with Southampton at St Mary’s Stadium on January 4 and came off the bench to once again face the team who said ‘no’ to him as a teenager ten days later when Ipswich lost their replay 1-0.

After being turned away from Southampton because he was ‘too small’, Mings signed for Yate in 2011. He played for them in Southern League Division One South & West, three tiers below the Conference before joining Chippenham Town in 2012 and then moving to Portman Road for the princely sum of just £10,000.

Arsenal are believed to want to nurture Mings as a left-sided central defender rather than an out-and-out left-back, but his dad added: “I think people pigeon-hole you into a position because you are six feet five.

“I think left-back is a good position for him and, when he learns the game a bit more, he can move to centre-half.”

But whatever happens to Mings, who was the Championship Player of the Month for September, either during the current or end-of-season transfer window, there is little doubt that he will always remember and be grateful to Yate Town for their help for putting him on the road to the Premier League – whenever that will be.