Utter ****, then we sign players like Dan Gosling, or Lascelles, cast offs about as good as we could produce ourselves. Whats the ****in point.
Thats true. But tbf Gosling had a bad injury problem, always suffering with something. Jamaal? No excuse. Has had backing from Rafa, Bruce always plays him. Hes just not good enough. He makes me depressed.
He may just not have what it takes. It's also possible he hasn't been coached to bring it out if it was ever there. Just thrown into the deep end for a short term fix and the result is that he just isn't good enough now.
Not sure we let a huge amount slip through our fingers, Armstrong was something of a rarity, normally our hot talent ends at Witley Bay or Jarrow Roofing by the time they're 21, while having a main job as a painter and decorator. Our youth system has long since been abandoned, and we just stick any old **** through the system to make up quotas.
Over a considerable length of time we have let a lot slip through our fingers or under developed them. Shearer, Beardsley and Carrick could all have joined us but didn't. The likes of Mbabu, Toney, Armstrong, Jon Dahl Tommason and others have been young players who we failed to get the best out of. I'm not sure it's that rare. I think the last youngster we developed properly was Tim Krul. I think he is more the rarity.
With Carrick the colossal **** up was not signjbg him later from West Ham and going for Nicky Butt instead. Mbabu is decent but I'm not sure he's massively better than what we already have, Toney and Armstrong were colossal **** ups with massive potential that we needed to get into long term contracts and give chances to. Jon Dahl Tomasson was a case of dreadful decisions, ie Ferdinand sold and Shearer injured, young inexperienced kid supposed to lead the line by himself, we set him up for failure. If we look at recent times, only the likes of Carroll, Dummett and Taylor have come in from the youth team and had long term careers (not counting Longstaffs yet), and they've hardly been world beaters. I remember when we got a "golden generation" of youngsters in Nile Ranger, Harris Vuckic, Ben Tozer, Aaron Spear etc, and they all amounted to dogshit. As well as neglect for a proper coaching team to develop any actual talent we have, there's a definite lack of any decent scouting network, meaning the majority of our youth prospects are useless knackers.
Dummett and Taylor are fair shouts. I don't think we have got the best out of Dummett though. I still think there was a very good defender in there who could have been so much better than he turned out.
Already a ****ing legend in my book mate. He's only scored one goal for us whilst he's been on trial with us.....and that was against the Mackems!
Every single manager we had seemed to rate Shola, they all consistently played the man. Even the managers who were actually decent liked him, ****ing baffling.
