Surely the reason for agreeing the invite is to give experience to your best players. if we rock up without all of our players then whats the point? if we are not going to field our strongest team then we may as well withdraw like Liverpool did. I am guessing the tournamont will last 3 weeks, pretty sure the likes of JWP will get more from that time rather than potentially being a bit player for the first team For me its important that all young players play for thier age group. The Ox and Shaw should have been made not available for the full world cup and made to play for the U19s and U21s. Teams like Chelsea will have all thier players available as they are not involved in the first team, our current U21 team is very young and would recieve a drubbing from a team like Chelsea. If we want to attract the best kids then we have to be competative Pretty sure we kind of agree with the main point that is the developement of the kids, we may differ on how to do it though
This year we have seen a number of players leave other Academies and join us. The only results that matter are how many end up as professional players. You can use the competition to provide good experience for players, however I view it as we should be using the best of the age group below, with makeweights. Just like the first team uses the best of the U21s. And the U21s use the best of the U18s. And so on. You take eligible players who are not in the first team rotation.
We certainly disagree on the "how" Just as an example, JWP started away to City and the following few games. Playing against top international and Premier league opposition has to be better than playing in his same age group where he won't be pushed as hard. To keep a player at his own age group when he is good enough to play higher, can only hold him back. Games become easy and they can do their job on the pitch without the same effort.
Definitely, if they're good enough they're old enough. Pele George Best Alan Ball Ryan Giggs Alan Shearer Matt Le Tissier Gareth Bale Just some examples we may know.
Excellent. You can also add how good it will be for the others to be tested in this tournament and bring their development on.
Always think David McGoldrick was an example of this. Scored bucketloads for Res/U18s but never really got his chance when he was hot. Shame.
But that philosophy works the opposite way too, if a player isn't a prodigy, but has great attributes, let them keep going. There's no problem with being the oldest kid in the class. Really the principles of developing great football players are the same as those in all teaching. What a shocker!
I nearly used teaching as an analogy earlier. If you have a kid who is very good at a topic and one who is not so good at the same topic, you would be pushing the better one on to harder questions/work, while helping encouraging the not so strong one at the right level (lower than the former). Right?
In that situation as a teacher, you would prepare extension material for the more academically capable student while for the less academically capable, you may prepare differentiated work or perhaps have a classroom assistant work with them individually. So yeah, pretty much what you say.
Often a players physical abilities dictate the speed of their development. If you're strong for your age (Shaw, Gallagher) or exceptionally quick(Walcott) then you have a stronger chance of being pushed to 1st team football around 17/18. The club have had to manage the development of Ward-Prowse & Reed because they've not been blessed with that early physical advantage. The same can be said of Lallana who was a late developer(in relation to Walcott/Bale). I'm pleased the club has learnt from previous mistakes and are not letting players go because they're too small (Dennis Wise/Kevin Philips as quick examples)