All the good ones are under contract for next season so will be here, it's the more longer term that's concerning. We should be moving heaven and earth yo keep them and involve them. Problem is, there's noone in the club (who handle that sort of thing) currently whose actually going to be here next season to do the convincing.
Most are only here for next year, though (Ballard and Doyle expire June 2023), and we have comprehensively failed to get them any playing time in the PL. It's going to be really difficult to convince them to re-sign in the summer if anyone comes in for them. We're in real danger of losing an entire generation of good talent because we simply couldn't be arsed to play them.
Absolutely. If we lose our best generation of academy kids since the days of jwp and shaw, I'll genuinely be so pissed off with the club. As I say, we have to move heaven and earth to convince them to stay.
And which PL club actually brings academy players through with any regularity? If they want to move to get first team football then fine, if they aren’t good enough to play, even if it is a bit part role, then we shouldn’t be playing them
We don't really know whether they're good enough to play, we haven't tried. Honestly, if we're just going to bury them until we're 100% they are better than our senior players, we should consider shuttering the Academy entirely, because it'll never have any significant value-added...we'll spend years developing them and they'll either jump at 17 when they can sign their first pro contract, or at 19 when that contract expires. Players don't need to spend years waiting their turn anymore...half of our squad of youngsters attests to that. And given our atrocious record in producing top-level players in the last decade, even without promises of playing time elsewhere it's not as if they're going to be heavily incentivized to stick around when they could be buried in a better Academy.
I agree to an extent, but the fact that we are targeting players from other academies and signing young players to play in the first time indicates that we feel that the current academy players aren’t ready. We clearly aren’t afraid to play young players so you have to ask yourself what the reason is we aren’t playing them, and the simple answer is because they aren’t very good. Also your point about being buried in a better teams academy is valid. How many players have come through non top teams academies in recent years? The rule change about kids being able to sign for any team has hugely affected where players go and anyone with any talent goes to a City/Chelsea very young so everyone else is scrapping over the second tier youth players
It’s a balancing act with the youth. Chucking them into a team in turmoil, playing awfully, in a relegation battle, with all the changes in management and methods really doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. At this point we are down, so I’d support including a few in the match day squads even if they stay on the bench. Have an adult chat with them that there will be a lot of change this summer but that they will get their chance next season in the Championship. If they still want to jump ship to get first team football in the PL AKA play in the academy of a PL team and eventually get loaned out to lower league teams for years then good luck to them. From my own opinion based on the admittedly limited U21s football I’ve watched at Staplewood. The highly thought of youngsters we have are not physically developed yet. They look very slight and young and although that’s not everything, it’s still important. Rebuild next season with the right manager, big changes in playing staff and mentslity and it feels like potentially the perfect environment to start seeing what they can do. Worked for Schneiderlin and Lallana.
Plymouth and Ipswich promoted to the championship 12 years ago Siants won promotion to the championship by beating Plymouth which relegated them to league 2...now we both meet next year
I see where you’re coming from, but Semmens, Steele et al have also been involved in our plummet, and I wouldn’t be confident if Semmens is making the decisions. The club under Ankersen has made sum awful decisions, but under Semmens we made some woeful ones too. We have pretty much downgraded every time we’ve sold someone, and that’s left us with a woeful squad that Ankersen decided to pad out with pre-schoolers. I have little confidence in anyone behind the scenes. We’ve been diabolical for about four years. Why would this new guy from City even want to come in now? Wouldn’t blame him if he decided to stay there or go anywhere but St Mary’s.
Semmens was a big factor in appointing Ralph though unless I'm much mistaken. Before SR came in, Semmens was doing a fine job. That seems to have been forgotten.
