My first ever post on this forum included having Skapetis in our squad as the 4th Striker to introduce him to first team football. He scored a bucket load for the Youth team as Captain and now we've let him go to a Premier League club. This to me is baffling and ridiculous. Why didn't he get a look in? I'm sure in the Carling Cup or the last 15 mins of games we were comfortable in, or even games we're losing in we could have put him in. The same argument could be made for Tom Hitchcock too
http://www.westlondonsport.com/qpr/axed-qpr-youngster-set-for-stoke-city-move75434-wls-football Failed to impress apparently. Sorry if it doesn't fit in with the 'our youth policy is crap' assumption.
The truth is, if a young player shows promise it gets to a point where you have to give him a chance or not. Playing in professional first team matches is a totally different affair and is totally different than playing in practice matches or the EDS team. He might have come alive if given the chance. I'm not saying he specifically should have been given the chance but the only way to know if these young players can make it is to give them a shot in the first team. If not, you might as well not have a youth policy. You can't wait to find the new Cantona, etc. No one is going to be the finished product and bringing in youth players is ALWAYS a gamble. Even when Liverpool bought Sterling it was a gamble. It obviously paid off but the kid could have crumbled if he wasn't the right character or sort.
Maybe he wasn't good enough, I've no idea. It does make you wonder though what is the point of our youth system, it seems to exist entirely to provide loan players for league 1 and 2 clubs... How much worse could some of them have been than some of the over paid couldn't care less brigade of recent times. How much worse could our league cup and FA cup record be if we had played a bit of youth from time to time? They never seem to get a chance and yet we don't hesitate to bring in other teams development players and give them a chance in the first team even when they're not all that, Macheda and even Will Keane this season spring to mind.
He wasn't good enough. He didn't impress. Stoke are hardly renown for producing youth players - who was their last big name youth product? A minimum of 90% of the players that come through our system are either released or join a lower club. The extra 10% either get sold at a young age (Sterling, Parrett) or start to make a few appearances for the club before inevitably dropping down the pecking order and find themselves in lower leagues (Scott Donnelly, Dennis Oli, Marcus Bean). Currently we have Max Ehmer, Michael Harriman and Tom Hitchcock who have been out on loan at league 1 clubs. If any of them manage to nail down a place in the first team squad then its one more youth product in the team then we've have in a long long time. Skapetis may have scored loads at u18 level. He didn't impress at u21. I highly doubt we'll be made to regret this.
Presumably Hughes got a good look at him during his time with us and saw enough to snap him up. Much as I think Hughes is not fit to mark out the pitch let alone manage a club this does make the decision interesting. On balance we have probably cocked up.
100% agree, we'll never know how good our youth are if we don't give them a chance. Let's face it they could hardly be worse than BLY or SWP and they've both been given matches this season. Unfortunately, Harry and youth (unless they're ex-Tottenham) don't go together. Only loser out of this policy is the club, in normal business you invest in the long term and have short term goals that help deliver the long term objective. At QPR, we have short term goals that lead to no long term objective. As said on another thread, let's have the clear out of loanees and end of contract players (with a few exceptions) and invest in the youth for the long term.
The only way we will get good youth players is if we play them, look at saints, they get at least one £10m player every season and they play them. We can't compete with the scum on money but we can be known as a club where youth players will be better off with a bigger chance to play first team football. We all know what the first step is there and it will happen in the summer, 2nd step is the academy and hopefully the players will be flowing after that.
CCJ I don't think Hughes signed us bad players per se, more that they were ill suited to be thrown together all at once and fight a relegation battle.
You want to bet he'll be a regular for the socceroo's sson (yes that other team that are also at the world cup)!! Can make a national side ala BAE, Adel etc, but not good enough for a struggling NPC side. open your eyes mate. he's a decent player and we have ****ed up on this one !
Come on guys get a grip. We let him go, so he can't have impressed that much. And secondly he's been signed by Mark Hughes, now most of you moaning would normally be moaning about any signing MH made, now that he's signed a player from us that no one's seen play and you're all moaning that we've let the next messi move on!
We let sterling move on and got £1m for him and now they are talking about taking him to the WC. It wasn't that he didn't impress.
