fran if you read all the news about the club you should know that the players moved into temporary facilities months ago and the work is ongoing, will be finished next summer. im pretty sure i read that on the OS in an interview with adkins i think it was.
You're defo no older than 15. Shearer, Wallace's, le tiss, oakley, wise, phillips....... the list is endless
The highly successful Stuart Pearce has been 'rewarded' with another 2 year contract to coach the England U21's. I mean, WTF?????
OURacademy is right up there with the best and is an integral part of the club for all kinds of resons sadly we have had to sell lots of talent but this may not always be the case if Cortese realises his ambitions for usas i am sure under this ownership there will be even more great talent coming through. One early poster on this subject named some , 'journry men' players we have brought through but like them or not they have continued to ply there trade at a respectable standard and in the process commanding much needed revenue at a very dodgy period in our historyie Mcgoldrick 1 m Blackstock 500.000 Dyer 400,000 Best 650,000 Baird 3.25 m Bridge 7,m Surman 1.25m that is without Bale and Walcott though its sad to have to sell even the very top clubs have to and we should be very proud of our set up.
our acadamy is very good ,and is highly regarded by other clubs .i noticed someone mentiond in an earlier thread that we do well in the acadamy league but this means nothing ,its all about developement at acadamy level not wins/points .most clubs do not worry about the score on the day and will concentrate on player developement .they will try and push the better kids into higher age groups so one day you will have a mix of 13/14/15 year olds playing against another acadamy of all 15 yer olds .its usually the team who is constantly togeather which will win on the day but it is the acadamy whos got the three 13 year olds playing against 15 yr olds which will be producing the higher qualiity players in the end.my son was at chelsea until recently and i watched the saints play at cobham last season ,the under 18s and also the under 14s.i would say the under `14s who are coming through for saints have more kids likely to make it some really talanted kids are at our club at the moment.better than chelsea.Aldershot are another club now concentrating on producing young talent and i bet in the near future saints will be stealing some of there youngsters coming through ,i know chris welman the saints recruitment officer has already been visiting surrey university where they are running there school of exellence and there elite squad from so they must have there eye on someone.
I remember last season that we were reported to have younger players than many of the teams we were playing against and yet we beat them.
Just a quick point on how tough it is for a player to carve out a career as a professional footballer in England. Rough Calculation 92 League clubs with squads of say 30....that's a pool of 2,760 pro players at any one time. The average career of a player is about 15 years. If for the benefit of simplicity the same amount of players retire as come through an academy you're looking at 184 new recruits a season (2 a club). This is all not even taking into account any foreign imports to our shores. So to have Lallana & Chamberlain in our 1st team is the expected average. Checking the leagues....Dyer, Bale, Walcott, Mills J, Mills M, Cranie & Gillet all feature for clubs in the top two divisions from more or less the same age group. This is way way above the expected average and proves it was a golden crop of youngsters who dominated the academy league. A small pat on the back must go to Rupert Lowe on the clubs investment with the academy as apart from Bridge & Oakley I can't think of Saints producing much between the early/mid 90s and early 00s.
Small point of order about the academy and funding, when we were out of cash and approaching admin there was hardly any investment in the academy, a lot of staff went down the road to Pompey who had money at the time (or so they thought) and other places. This meant that obviously the training that the kids got wasn't as good and there was a lot less scouting going on. Now that Cortese is in charge all of those staff are coming back home as well as the training ground improvements. The point being that although previous posters are right to say that Bale and Walcott aside we have only produced a handful of Prem players recently, I think this will be changing pretty soon. Also as some others have said only a small number of players will make it and this is not the club's fault, a lot of young players won't have the right attitude so don't train hard enough or get into the wrong stuff, other players get injured or just don't fulfill their potential. The academy boss said on the OS not long ago that he wants players who have the right head on which makes a change from the normal position of best player = contract. I know there are some lads in the younger age groups who would definitely get a scholarship if only they would look up and pass the ball occasionally instead of trying to score every time.
Thank you for your votes and comments A whopping 84.62% and 44 out of 52 saying one of the best in the country. I am happy to accept that though i am hoping to see better results of academy players really making an impression on the first team. There is no way i could compare Southampton to Barcelona who i think most would agree has the best academy in the world. A point of my original post being that a team like Barcelona fielded 5 former academy playes in the champions league final (nearly half the team). Saints in their respective lower league competition regularly fielded 2 former academy playes. To say we are one of the best i would like to see that ratio increase and i am sure it will. i take on board many of the comments about taking a hit during administration and previous managers/approaches. I do think the academy is being well run and can only see it getting better. Thanks again for your thoughts COYR
Read in The Echo that Jordace Holder-Spooner is on trial at Bournemouth. Not that I personally know anything about him, but I thought that he was a promising product of the academy. Have heard people on here saying good things about him in the past, anyone shed some light on this?
