We couldn’t do anything about the Dibling deal. He is free to move wherever he likes before he turns 17 and signs a pro deal
Dibling is only 16, so the club unfortunately can’t do much. Certainly can’t use him as part of a deal.
Very poor guidance from those youngsters advisors joining Chelsea instead of staying here. There is no better pathway to premier league football than us for a young player. They will likely never get a chance at Chelsea.
Oops. Yeah just repeated this. There is a big chance that he isn’t that good. He had one stand-out performance that got plastered all over social media. Otherwise didn’t hear much about him. Not bothered. Probably never hear of him again.
While this is true. The draw of earning big bucks is significant for someone so young, and who might not actually turn out to be good enough, or might suffer a career-ending injury.
It’s often forgotten that, while larger clubs look at our U17 players as happy hunting grounds, we also poach players from smaller Football League academy systems. We’ve always been happy to take from smaller teams and they’ve been fished to the point of unsustainably. We can’t really be too upset when it happens to us. It’s the way it works with 16 year olds. I don’t really see that there’s anything to do about it either. They shouldn’t be signing binding contracts at that age and should be free to play wherever wants them. If Dibbling blew out his knees next week and his career is over before it starts, we’re not going to take care of him financially. Neither would Chelsea. They absolutely should maximise their earnings for their labour while they can. Plus, they know that if they manage their pro deals sensibly, they can absolutely force moves or walk away at age 20 and get game time elsewhere if they feel there’s no pathway.
Yeah take the 20k a week now and hope that it’s just the beginning. If it isn’t then at least you’ve set yourself up for life in a few years. A mate of mine is a Bristol Rovers season ticket holder. They got some 18/19 year old on loan from Chelsea a few years ago, said he rocked up to the car park in a 200k lambo, barely could get in their team in league 2 but was on supposedly 30k a week at Chelsea. Can’t remember his name so not sure if he made it at some level Also if you get released by a Chelsea at like 20 then lots of clubs will take a chance on you because you were released by Chelsea, a higher level to fall from
Well yeah they could’ve had talks with him/his family/advisors but that’s about it. Any club can approach any player before they turn 17 about moving academy
Agreed. We do the exact same thing to clubs with far more uncertain futures than ourselves. Although there should be something done about it, but not focused on restricting player choices. In addition to the measly compensation, you could include automatic clauses such as 25%/50% sell on causes on all players that switch academies before signing pro deals. The governing bodies could get creative with things such as tying the currently crap compensation fees to the value of the 1st pro deal the player signs. Plenty can, and should, be done to protect clubs that do the hard work in producing young players before bigger clubs such as ourselves or Chelsea swoop in at 16.
And that’s exactly what I meant. Just need to find their “hot” buttons. Apply some pressure, negotiate a compromise which could involve Colwill. That was my point.
But this is it though - we were in no position to apply any pressure. We couldn’t stop it other than breaking our academy pay structure which we clearly weren’t going to do
Really? If you go to a club like Chelsea and don't make it you'll end up at a good premier league club. If you don't make it with us then you'll be looking at dropping into the lower leagues. It's a good move from all angles on his part.
But you choose not to mention them? I would be very very interested since we have very little leverage I guess putting him in the first team squad for pre season and perhaps guaranteeing him game time this season? But that could never be concrete because he might not be good enough yet. Indeed quite likely is not good enough yet. Also sets a troubling precedent for the rest I guess if this was football manager it may be possible to offer a contract for say half of what Chelsea offered that rocketed up to more than they did once he got 5 or 10 games. Whether those exist in real life though is another thing. And again, not something we can do on a widespread basis
There was a rumour the other day that we were after Delap on a permanent rather than a loan I wonder if this is because : - we want to avoid a Broja situation (although an option could also work here) - we want to keep a loan slot open for city - we want both loan slots open one way or another I’d imagine it is a combination. Notably due to the need for right back cover There was also a note saying we had a decent amount of money for a striker. I’d like to think that any big money striker purchase would not be on Delap who is unproven - but on an additional striker as we do only have two. But equally can’t seem him going for less than the other two City players we have signed There is still a fair amount of time but also lots to do and the squad looks unbalanced. And lots of teams are moving very early this year. Unsure why that really is.
Of course we can dangle carrots but we're not Chelsea. That's the deciding factor in this. The guy will probably end up on loan at Vittese. As much as we're famed for giving youngsters a chance we're not in the big 6!
I suspect that there's also a different mindset regarding the idea of 'unproven'. Ankersen is a very data-driven sort, and one of the notable features of Brentford's rise was how successful they were at buying unproven players (particularly strikers) and having them produce from the off. I'd take a guess that they believe that they can identify players that will be productive at a reasonably high level of confidence (where the general level of confidence one has even with proven players isn't really all that high).
