Then please enlighten me as to what "Someone thinks an awful lot of himself. Not the sort of player we want." means to you.
It doesn't really matter does it? If a player leaves, yeah, I'm with Mowgli, bollocks to them. Why bother with all the haughtiness all the bloody time guys? It's just a football forum. Can't we just occasionally say something flippant without being jumped on? Let it go.
Simple really. The philosophy is the same throughout the club. If a player thinks they are too good for the club, let them go. Keep them and they have could end up negatively influencing the mood in the team.
I hate to break it to you, but literally every player in our squad would join Man City if offered the opportunity. If that's the bar for deciding whether we should get shot of someone, we're going to be fielding a team of nothing but Not606ers.
Academies have been an interesting development in football at a time when many fans bemoan how much it’s now removed from its working class roots. Although I reluctantly accept it as part of the modern game there is something quite obscene about fighting over young prospects who are often only 6 years old. How many at that age (or early teens for that matter) really know what they want? Is it the desire to play football for the love of the game or the desire to be a superstar? Every parent wants their child to succeed but they also need space to be children. If we don’t get that balance right we end up with ‘role models’ like Foden, Greenwood and Maguire.
I don't think clubs/academies really care about whether Foden/Greenwood/Maguire are great "role models" or not. They care that they become elite footballers - which they now are. Also, I don't think you can really have a go at Foden or Greenwood for not being good role models. Assuming you are referring to the Iceland incident... if I had a 18 year old son that turned down the chance to to get an Icelandic model in his hotel room, even with Covid restrictions, I'd wonder what was up with him!! Covid or not, teenagers do stupid **** sometimes.
£25 mil for him would be pretty good in fairness, especially with just 1 year left on his deal. Given the choice, I'd probably rather Spurs sign their other targets and Vestergaard sign a new deal here though.
Saints famously recruited a young Welsh kid who they scouted when he was 9, as the team had a satellite academy in Bath that allowed us to circumvent the catchment area rules at the time. He went on to be pretty good, and I don't remember much pearl-clutching from Saints fans about the terrible example we were setting for the football world. And that was over 20 years ago.
I do! More a laugh though in those days that we should’ve looking at signing players that young. Like I said, even those that find it a little obscene, accept it as part of the modern game.
Wasn't really that unusual; teams have been scouting players 10 or younger for a long time now. We were ahead of the curve in vacuuming up young talent from lower-level clubs, though, which played a significant role in the success of our Academy: used the Bath satellite to get Bale, nicked Walcott off Swindon, and Lallana off Bournemouth among others. Now that other clubs have caught up, it's the end of football.
