If we add up all the cash we've spent on old men and young unproven strikers plus the plethora of attacking midfield players we can't fit in to our system, (under Acun), we could have afforded a proper goal scorer.
I wouldn’t. Without the ball, playing Palmer in midfield is like playing with 10 men. Sellés wants all his players to work hard on and off the ball, even the attacking midfielders and wingers. Ömür’s been disappointing this season but his work-rate off the ball suits Sellés far more than Palmer ever would.
“Burstow was a buy for the future and I'm certain the plan was to loan him out,” No No No No When did this become a thing?? Buy a player to play for us Trust your judgement not swop and change constantly I think this all part of the problem these last few years Furlong Celi etc etc et fuxkjng cetera sign them mould them play them
I dare say if Drameh isn’t getting in over Coyle, Jacob or Macca on either flank we might as well sell him to fund a replacement.
I agree, it's something bigger clubs do when they have the money to do it, apparently we never got the memo and just thought that if we copied them, we'll do well too. It became a thing when dickhead clubs like Chelsea and Man City had more money than sense and paid scouts tens of thousands to fly around the world and hoover up all the talent from poorer clubs so they could eventually sell them on for a profit. Case in point: In Summer, Chelsea sold Ian Maatsen, Angelo Gabriel, Diego Moreira, Omari Hutchinson, Lewis Hall, Michael Goulding and Mason Burstow for a combined £113m. Between them, they had made 24 Premier League appearances for Chelsea, half of which were Ian Maatsen. In Summer, Man City sold Tommy Doyle, Dario Sarmiento, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Lewis Fiorini, Liam Delap, Alex Robertson, Micah Hamilton, Kane Taylor, George Murray-Jones and Filip Stevanovic for a combined £48m. Between them, they had made 4 league appearances, all of which were Tommy Doyle. It's not uncommon to buy young players from abroad or from other clubs to develop them for the future, but I'd have to ask questions about the most recent ones because although Jarrod Bowen was amazing having signed for our academy from Hereford, he is somewhat of an anomaly. Some of our academy purchases in the past... James Furlong Yuriel Celi Tom Nixon Vaughn Covil Festus Arthur Elliot Bonds Max Sheaf Danny Lupano Will Mannion Calaum Jarahldo-Martin Brian Lenihan Bowen is the only youngster we bought from another club for our academy that I can remember actually being quality, Harry Vaughan is probably the next best and I've left him of by virtue of him still being here this season (Furlong is at Wimbledon). All the others came and went, with only Covil really making any sort of headway into the first team picture and he wasn't amazing. I was curious about this, so I've just had a look at our U21s squad. If I include Harry Vaughan in it, then 11 of the 18 U21s players were brought in from other clubs and judging by how close they are to the first team, I'm guessing they were brought in to pad out the squad as opposed to being hot prospects for the future. Which is a ****ing shambles, really.
11 of the 18 u21’s are brought in? What is going wrong with our coaching methods when we have kids signed from 8?? Years old? That they’re getting kicked out at 17-18.
The direction of our academy is a bit sad, if I’m being honest. The under-21s are actually doing well in their league but as you said, most of the main under-21s were signed from other academies. Lewis-Potter and Greaves are both local lads who came through our youth ranks and are the best academy products we’ve had (not including Bowen). Even players like Sellars-Fleming were poached from Scunny. The best academy prospect we currently have that came through our youth ranks and not poached from other academies or non-league clubs is Stan Ashbee. To quote Princess Leia, he’s our only hope right now for an academy product to develop and sell for a huge amount like Lewis-Potter and Greaves. The others I don’t think will play higher than League One in their entire careers.
In the last few seasons, the promoted clubs have all had players that have hit at least 13; 2022/23 Illiman N'Diaye (14) - Sheff Utd Carlton Morris (20) - Luton Nathan Tella (17) - Burnley 2023/24 Nathan Broadhead/Conor Chaplin (13) - Ipswich Adam Armstrong (24) - Southampton Jamie Vardy (18) - Leicester It's looking like Leeds will go up with Joel Piroe on 15 already, Sheff U have more of a spread and their top scorer is Hamer with 7. Sunderland have Isidor on 12 and WBA have Maja on 12 too. Meanwhile our top goalscorer is Pedro on 5. Our next two top goalscorers are Chris Bedia (3) and Xavier Simons (2) who aren't here. Being a bit mean, Crooks and Belloumi, Kamara and Burstow also have 2.
Good question. Why is it that we've arrived at a point where the U18s aren't good enough to step up and we've had to fill it out with lads from Bradford and Scunthorpe?
Rocco Coyle and Paul Iggulden are the two other best prospects. Sincere Hall is pretty good, but his age is against him as he needs to be playing at a higher level at his age in order to progress. Playing at Liversidge Town doth butter no parsnips.
The two Ipswich lads haven’t played much 9 and 15 games this season Should we have tried to prise them away?
Didn’t someone from the club come out with Got to hit the ground running not carrying passengers type message awhile back? Hardly productive when we should be nurturing them. Side topic was there something about Beal getting charged or done for something bad why he left??
Macca has been trying to play like a left back though, he hasn’t been hybrid anything. I think he’s playing because the other options aren’t very good. I’d rather Jacob personally, but even the most ardent academy proponent must admit he’s limited.
Well done. Not too often you see 17th century sayings on a football thread. Agree with what you are saying, BTW.
Weren’t there serious allegations or something but they turned out to be baseless and possibly influenced by homophobia? I don’t know, I just remember a discussion on here a few years ago about it. I seem to also remember he went to work for female academies after leaving us, possibly because it’s a more tolerant environment. I think it’s telling that there are no openly gay or bisexual players in England’s top four professional men’s leagues, except for that academy player at Blackpool but he’s spent most of his time so far on loan at non-league teams. The men’s game is more tolerant and forgiving of ****bag rapists and wife-beaters than openly-gay players despite the empty PR stuff like rainbow armbands.
When you have two world cups in countries where being gay is illegal - and a governing body that refuses to acknowledge that that isn’t great - it makes the empty PR even worse.
It just seems that, given the estimates for gay and bisexual men in general, certain industries like the entertainment industry may be quite over-represented but men’s football is extremely under-represented. It’s like 20-30 years behind the rest of Western society in that respect. Could it be that the top leagues in Europe are quite diverse when it comes to the national origin and cultural/religious background of players so attitudes in the dressing room are less tolerant of homosexuality to reflect that? Muslim players as you alluded to but also Latin American, Eastern European, Balkan and African players who come from countries and cultures which are generally less tolerant than Western Europe when it comes to LGBT people.
I think it’s a combination of all of that to be fair. You only have to look at the response to club’s pride flag posts to see the level of disdain from other corners of the world. I’m not sure how you tackle it across world football as it’s such a wide society issue that as you say bleeds into dressing rooms from all quarters of the game. I think the FA and FIFA need to be stronger about it to lead the way. Jordan Henderson took so many leaps forward but completely destroyed it all by going to play in Saudi. FIFA have dropped the ball so many times with their stances on armbands and getting themselves into such a knot to show support but carefully not going too far as to not annoy the opposition, which just ends up annoying everyone. We’ve got to a point where probably only serious outreach work will do. Platitudes have been shown to be absolutely meaningless so why should LGBT fans trust a word the FA and FIFA have to say on the subject? The one thing that will improve matters in liberal countries now is for the game to show it means it
Supposedly Richard Kone at Wycombe is. He came out as gay at the homeless world cup (believe it was the reason he was homeless) but now he’s got a missus and a kid so not really sure what the crack is there
