Brother is a Cov fan so been well aware of him for a few years now. Reminds me of Lallana in terms of his ability on the ball, albeit not at that level. His end product used to let him down a little but since coming back from a long term injury this season be has been brilliant.
Shame about Doyle, but signing Rothwell was probably the final nail of him getting game time this season and Brighton came with the money and the ego stroking. Looked fantastic for the b team, technically very good, but did look lost outwide in the pre-season games
Better that the disloyal ones leave the club as early as possible, so they don't stand in the way of others. All the best to Doyle, but daft of him to complain about playing time when he's been injured all season
We can talk about disloyalty, but until our academy players get meaningful playing time, this is going to keep happening again and again and again. And the problem isn't that those players are atypically disloyal, it's that we have done a pathetic job of getting them chances with the first team. Doyle's injuries may have hindered his opportunities specifically, sure, but do you know how many minutes in the league that we have given to Academy graduates this year? Two. A grand total of two minutes for all of our Academy kids combined. We can make all the damned promises we please, if we don't actually follow through on those promises, they are meaningless and players will treat them as such. And when a team with an actual record of giving kids a chance comes in for them, they will leave.
You're differentiating between youth players who have come up through the academy, and those who have signed from other academies. But what's the difference, really? Sure it would be great to have some local lads rising through the ranks, but let's face it, that's not really how football is these days. Almost every big club fills their academy with youngsters poached from smaller clubs. And if we consider all youngsters at the club, suddenly things don't look so bleak. Last season, we gave more minutes to under-21 players than any other team in the Prem. By some distance. Granted having a 20 year old keeper playing most of the season helped, but even without Bazunu we finished on top. Nottm Forest gave a total of 7 minutes to u21 players all season. Half the league fewer than a thousand minutes. Ignoring Bazunu, we gave around 5,000 minutes to u21 players. And the result? Relegation. Our fans' main criticism of the new owners was that they focused too much on bringing in young players. This was widely accepted as the primary reason for our demise. So it's a bit ironic to be criticising the club now for not playing our youngsters enough. On top of this we have a new manager, half a new squad, and immense pressure every game to keep up with the top two. Despite this we still have one of the youngest teams in the division. This Doyle situation is a joke. The lad was given his first team debut last season, was heavily involved in pre-season, but then gets a long-term injury. So how is he complaining about playing time? Makes no sense at all. All the while Dibling, Bragg, SAA, Meghoma are inching closer and closer to increased involvement with the first team as the season goes on. All of them have a very realistic chance of becoming important players for us next season if we don't go up. Let's just wait and see how much game time Doyle gets at Brighton before we start criticising our own club. Chances are we won't hear much about him for a while.
I'm differentiating between them because there have been longstanding problems with us actually giving homegrown players a chance, and as of a couple years ago both DTLW and Beefy mentioned that there was frustration with the club from the families of players on that score. Players don't want to be "inching closer" to "increased involvement", they want to actually play. What is the increased involvement for Dibling, Bragg, SAA and Meghoma even likely to look like? Almost nothing, I'd expect. A couple of them will get sub appearances against Watford. If we go out, or face PL opposition in the next round, I'd hazard a guess that is the last significant action they see this year. Maybe a couple five minute cameos, nothing more. From the start of September on, SAA has been on the bench for 11 matches. He didn't see the pitch in any of those games, even though there were multiple blowouts in there. Maybe if he keeps inching closer, he'll get all the way to the touchline once by the end of the year! Stating that they might get chances next year (if we don't go up, of course...there's a tacit admission that they won't sniff the pitch if we do) is the problem. All we can offer these kids is speculative. Stick around and, under the right circumstances, during an injury crisis, under a full moon, it's theoretically possible that we'll get them out there for a short runabout if we're up four. Or maybe not. We might want to ensure that Fraser and Mara get a few minutes of burn instead, and Jack's our captain so he shouldn't be left on the bench, and suddenly months pass without making any genuine attempt to get them playing time. At some point, it's a pattern. That point came years ago now. If we want our reputation as a place that ignores its homegrown talent to change, we need to be the ones to change it. If we can't be bothered to offer anything tangible, we shouldn't be surprised when the youth products don't take us at our word that, surely, a real chance is just around the corner. Always just around the corner but never actually arriving. If they're going to not play, most are going to prefer to not play somewhere that at least has some history of trying to graduate kids.
You make it sound like bringing youth players through is the most important thing. It's not, sadly. It's all about money and prizes. And you seem to disagree with Martin bringing on Fraser and Mara on instead of the youngsters. You really think Dibling would have the same impact as Fraser? And Mara is a youngster himself. And of course Stephens is on the bench; he's our 3rd choice CB and captain. These 'multiple blowouts' really aren't as common as you imply. How many times have we been truly comfortable with twenty minutes to go? Most of our high scoring games occurred because we brought Fraser and Mara on to get a couple of late goals. Putting a youth player on the bench means they don't play that weekend for the u21s/u18s. At 18 years old is it better to sit on the first team bench every week in the hope of getting 10 minutes, or playing 90 mins in a competitive youth game? It's a tough one. Finding the right balance is key. But Doyle didn't leave for more game time anyway. So I'm not going to panic just yet. And we've brought in several youngsters over the last few weeks too, so clearly SR have the academy high up in their list of priorities.
Then what is this nonsense about calling Doyle disloyal? If bringing through youth players isn't important to us -- and it clearly isn't -- why wouldn't they want to move on? That's not disloyalty, it's recognizing the bloody obvious. So, again, we don't actually have any intention of giving them meaningful chances. They might sniff the pitch if we're up several goals and we feel truly comfortable and we don't have anything better to do. Weird that these kids aren't kissing our feet for all these opportunities! Again, we have had SAA on the bench eleven times in the past five months. And he played exactly zero minutes in those matches. I'll believe that when we actually give them a chance. I've been waiting since Koeman.
SAA has played 74 minutes in the league from one start and two sub appearances. He played 84 minutes in the one FA cup game we've had so far. He played 90 minutes in the one League cup game we had this season. Total first team minutes this season = 248 minutes Not bad for a 17 year old.
Sure JWP played a couple of games at the start of the season if you’re going to skew the figures to make a point. it’s all about money and it’s naive to think otherwise and I don’t blame anyone. This last season would have been a harsh reality check for Doyle on how hard it is to break into the men’s game and how with an injury you’re seconds away from disaster. not just his injury, but Ballard, Morgan, Edwards, Simeu and probably other academy team mates have had long term injuries and all were about to make there start in the men’s game and he’s probably looked at Morgan and thought, I’d rather be injured on that salary.
I mean, I was talking about relatively young Academy products. JWP graduated from the Academy 11.5 years ago...doesn't really say much about our willingness to bring through youth in recent years. And JWP's pretty instructive. We had just gotten back to the PL, and at 18 he started the first match, away against Man City. Today, we argue that we can only use our Academy kids in the Championship if we're really, really comfortably ahead.
Sad truth is the kids have to be absolutely amazing to get anywhere near the team, and they just aren’t. JWP, Theo, bale were unreal talents you could see it early on. SAA showed some glimpses in the friendly, but looked out of his depth when he started in the champ. Martin has been to watch the youth team a lot, I don’t think he is ignoring them like Koeman did. I just think there aren’t any that are ready for first team action. I guess we will see if Doyle or any of the young players that leave get any minutes elsewhere..but if I had to guess, their scouts and coaches will reach the same conclusions and they will be in the same boat.
Exactly. We have a proven pathway. If these young kids want to play.. work harder. Improve. Saints will always give you a chance.
