Transfer Rumours Gibbo

Its a bit of a vicious circle at the minute. There is nothing we could do in the short term to stop him leaving, and at the same time I don't blame him for feeling he will get better development at Everton. We are suffering from years of neglect in the youth structure. Hopefully Rafa has a plan to sort that side of the club out, but until youngsters start seeing examples of other youngsters being developed and coming through then our most talented youth players will always be at risk of thinking that they will be better off elsewhere.

 

That's what you have to do when you operate at the lower level though. Take a chance. He has shown a very decent level of ability at international youth levels. Enough the likes of Spurs and Everton have squabbled over trying to get him into their U23 team. Look at Sessegnon, Rooney, Walcott, Targett, Bale, Wilshere, Lennon, Milner, Heskey, Woodburn, Joe Cole, Barry, Sterling, Fabregas, Shaw, Owen, Sturridge etc. These lads all had very limited junior experience and were thrust in at the age of 16 or 17. Yes in current times it may be time before he gets into an Everton team, but I bet if he was at lower PL/Championship team he'd get a chance.

We have **** options at left back too. Surely he could at least provide some meaningful competition for Dummett. I don't particularly rate Dummett as a left back so in my book he's probably better already, but I accept some like Dummett a bit more. The point is we have ****ing Haidara hovering about - jesus wept the young lad couldn't do any worse. If he saw an instant path into the PL then maybe like the Southampton youngsters etc they stick around a bit longer. If you are told you are going to get no more opportunity than you will get at an Everton etc, then I can see why you twist.

It may be he was offered a first team squad place and still moved anyway. I'm simply saying I bloody hope we did because otherwise I'd be in the camp of saying we ****ed that up.

 

Got to say never pleased to see a youth prospect go but doesn't sound like we had much say and if the quoted £5/6m is correct then good luck to the lad.

For a youngster with no professional games under his belt that is incredible business from our point of view and he could be one knee injury from being a league 2 standard player.

Wish him all the best though and maybe one day he will be back.

 

Sometimes you just have to trust the manager but managers need to give lads more chances and fans need to be more patient. We all seem to just accept squad players being signed up and fair enough I suppose if they are fairly young anyway but often I think it might have been an opportunity for the kids. For instance could we not have kept Mbabu instead of signing Manquillo ( forgive the spelling if wrong) and still had Sterry in contention?
The transfer window system also doesn't help. In the past you could gamble on a couple of kids and if it didn't pay off dip into the transfer market to fill the spot but now if you risk it you know it's like that for half a season. Risky, could cost a manager his job

 

Got me there, was that when we did away with the youth system or did that happen after they'd come through?

 

They came through mainly under Ardiles just before Keegan. We were s••t at the time though and desperate although Ossie did believe in youth and it payed off later, just not for him lol. Keegan who ditched the reserves, not the youth team, benefitted. To be fair to Keegan I think he believed more in kids either being good enough to try out straight in the first team from the youth team or loaning them out which is exactly what actually happens now. The reserves at the time played in a bit of a cloggers league, the central league, made up mostly of lower divisions reserve teams and first teamers getting a very half hearted run out to keep fit or return from injury so the competion was seen as pointless by him.

 

Supposedly Keegan demolished the reserve team because he threw a tantrum at being told the youth team had to play matches on the senior home pitch. Now he was probably right, it was a ridiculous rule. Plus for anyone who went to our games at the time, our pitch was in such a state that you had literally dozens of people on the pitch at half time replacing divots. However it was a very poor decision. We lost a lot of players because of it. You had youth set players like Carrick feeling they had nowhere to go, and useful squad players like Huckerby and Guppy having no way of maintaining match fitness.

He did also think the league was sub standard and it was eventually replaced by the U21 league.

The Ardiles example is good one nonetheless however. It took a crisis of a situation at the club for us to blood some youth. We were richly rewarded. Elliott, Watson, Howey, Clark were all useful first team squad members under Keegan. Amazing what happens when you take a chance. Watto was only 16 on debut. In fact I think Elliott, Thompson, Howey, and Clark were all about 17.

 

Pretty much correct - the big issue however in abandoning the reserves was the lack of a path from juniors to reserves to first team hence losing the likes of Darren Huckerby who saw more obvious routes elsewhere.

We also lost out on Michael Carrick at the time who was at the Centre of Excellence - he ended up at West Ham because his parents couldn't see a route for him to go into the first team given the squad we had.

 

Anyway, the lad's gone and I'm sure we can all agree that we hope he falls down the stairs and breaks both his legs.

 

Er yeah I did mention that too.

Keep up at the back!

 

it was a good point - and as such, needed emphasising!