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With a couple of additions, pref young hungry players and not another Douglas, to complement the players mentioned, i think we would be far more entertaining and a stronger force.
Oh and Nuggets, i wasnt suggesting we could buy Fraser, i meant another season long loan, thats why i put 'if poss' i meant if it was possible to get him again.
 
I think Chambers is a better defender than Tommy Smith. I'd prefer Chambers in the centre, alongside Berra, and a new face at right-back. Knudsen looks a much improved player than at the start of the season and I think he can develop into a good player for us, but not at an Aaron Cresswell level. The focus on player recruitment and investment (should Evans provide the manager with any) has to be on those wide attacking areas, right-back, and maybe a new central midfielder. I only say we need a defensive-minded midfielder to give the side balance and to protect us from clubs that will look to counter-attack us, which they inevitably will if we overstuff the centre with too many attacking players. It's all well and good having a 'fecking good go at teams', but you'll get found out at this level if you just adopt an all out attack, 'we'll score one more than you' mentality. And if the new manager did adopt that tactic, it would be crazy. We'd be nowhere near the play-offs, and that's ultimately whereabouts we want to be, otherwise, why change McCarthy and go backwards? Where would be the ambition in that?
 
I agree we need a few additions to this squad and a manager who is prepared to give our younger players an opportunity. I wouldn't focus on exclusively buying young players (mostly because we have our own and they cost a lot). Dozzell might be another example of a youth player who promises much, but delivers little, yet he deserves an opportunity in the first team. His form for your reserves and the England youth sides have showed us he can play football.

Another loan deal for Fraser could work, and he is exactly the type of player we need for a promotion push. I guess one good aspect of Bournemouth avoiding the drop is that they won't be too eager to have him in the squad. The hope is we don't get beaten to a loan move by a bigger club.
 
Spanish said:
Nuggets
i said build the team around these players, thats not my starting lineup, although, is Chambers that much better than Emmanuel and Knudsen that much better than Kenlock, after all, we have hardly set the world alight with these players!! Same goes for Skuse, how many goals has he scored/created, the guy makes Ray Wilkins look like the most attacking midfielder ever!! sorry but i hate this 'you have to have one sitting CM' mentality. Who says you need this, i would much rather have a fecking good go at teams and make them worry about us for a change instead of us always changing things around!!
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From what I've seen in the U21s Spanish I would say that K'nudson is a lot better than Kenlock and also Chambers is also better than Emanuelle.
 
Spanish said:
Well what I have seen of Knudsen, he is **** at best!
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What does that say about Kenlock.....<laugh>.

Tbh I think that K'nudsen has improved over the season which is all you can ask of young players.......if we played Kenlock you would be calling him **** within ten minutes no doubt <cheers>, he is weak in the challenge, slow in the pass, and he sometimes looks like his mind is elsewhere......but when he is on his game he can play....so needs time in my opinion.
 
Sorry I'm with Spanish for the most part here Knudsen is ****ing jizz most games.

He had his pants pulled down well and truly at both Hudds and City. That said at Brighton he decided he wanted to be Denmark's best player ever, he was superb.

How in gods name he is a guaranteed started would make me want to punch a wall as a youngster.

That said, Yowerth was apparently horrific for Crawley at Bristol City so not sure how good our youth are.

That said, AGAIN ( English bypass here ) our Under 21s HAVE picked up the past few months so the academy does seem to be doing more. Seems Dozzell is a right talent, McDonnell now seems to be doing more. The latter really could do with a 10 game loan spell I feel.
 
And of course, playing Devil's Advocate here, are the young players really that good? Remember McCarthy essentially gave them all chances in the cup competitions, including the two games against League Two side, Portsmouth, and they struggled.
 
I often wonder too - Yowerth apparently guff being an example. Clarke HASN'T always lined up for Pompey. No one has taken McDonnell off our hands. Until recently the U21 results were bloody crap too.

Dozzell does seem to be pushing on massively and Kenlock perhaps seems the other most likely to make the grade of the current batch.
 
It doesn't help that we have a board that seems content with a Category Two rating. Cast your minds back to 2014, and we missed out on a Category One academy by less than a percentage point, if I recall correctly. All the benefits that status brings, not to mention surrounding clubs like Norwich and West Ham have Cat One ratings, means that we've missed out on some good young players recently.

Despite all the PR spin and empty promises over the past couple of years, I've seen no real effort from the board to improve our academy status, despite one of our aims being a relatively self-sufficient squad by 2017. A pipe dream, although considering the lack of investment over the years, I won't be surprised if the board hopes the squad is half full of average, cheap youngsters who aren't cut out for the first team squad.

Just read this guff. Not sure when it was written, but it looks terribly outdated now - http://itfcacademy.com/
 
Nuggets the board are desperate for cat 1 - Milne was basically jizzing his pants over cat 1 the entire 2 hours he spoke to us at the SW supporters club - well a good chunk of time was about this.

It was more the fact the big clubs are doing all they can to prevent he likes of us being cat 1 - which explains a bit to me now why we failed it by less than 1%.

He revealed the club were absolutely 100% certain we'd made cat 1 when we put it in before, and the goalposts had changed somewhat.

From what I gather we won't be trying for a while and he seemed to have a very annoyed look on his face when grilled about it - as though it had really riled people at the club.

Seems a shame but so long as we produce a couple any rate.
 
This just sounds like spin to me, Westy. It's all well and good talking about wanting to be Category One and looking passionate and fired up over wanting to get a Category One status, but the fact of the matter is, the board and Milne have had two years to pull their finger out and achieve that status. To miss out by so little implies we weren't far off the mark. So what's changed? Why has it become difficult all of a sudden? Did Milne give an answer over why we haven't tried since?

Because that line, 'we won't be trying for a while' just stinks of the loss of ambition about the place. It highlights the main concern most of us have about our owners; that they're content with second-best, they're content to be making a slight profit, they're content to adhere to an FFP system that has since been revealed as toothless and ineffective.

Yes, we have a few good players at the academy, and we're in safe hands with Klug at the helm, but the implication is we'd be getting more good players at the academy under Category One, and we'd be playing a higher calibre of opposition too.

The fact one of this club's apparent stated aims is a squad containing mostly home-grown players by next year, or whenever that arbitrary date was set, would make you presume that the club were a little more driven and passionate about updating this status.
 
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I just don't understand why we're not at that stage yet? Is it a case of us not jumping through enough hoops or scratching the right backs? We cannot be far off if we came so close last time. Maybe we only have a certain amount of applications?

Either way, if this board were serious enough about the Category One status, I struggle to think why we wouldn't have it now.
 
Nuggets said:
I just don't understand why we're not at that stage yet? Is it a case of us not jumping through enough hoops or scratching the right backs? We cannot be far off if we came so close last time. Maybe we only have a certain amount of applications?

Either way, if this board were serious enough about the Category One status, I struggle to think why we wouldn't have it now.
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I think it's the Premier(big) clubs that only want a few cat1 clubs so they have the upper hand over everyone else, we should have gone all out to get in with the initial grading to do away with moving goalposts.
 
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I wouldn't suggest a dramatic overhaul of the starting eleven, such as fielding, say, five or six youngsters in the team. But I'd certainly keep an eye out for promising players like Dozzell and give them an opportunity in the first team, especially replacing some of the older players who are out of form.

Recently, we've had Tyrone Mings and Teddy Bishop come through the academy and they adapted brilliantly to Championship football and surprised fans with their attacking play. Obviously not all our youngsters are going to adapt and fulfil their potential, but our history has been built on giving talented, young players a go in the first team and watching them develop.
 
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