Liam Agnew, Martin Smith, Mikael Mandron and Dylan McEvoy have not been offered new contracts and will leave the club at the end of this season when their existing deals expire. Academy manager, Ged McNamee, said: “On behalf of everyone at the Academy I would like to wish the lads well for the future. “It is never easy to release players especially when they have been with you for a number of years, but we always ensure that we do everything we can to support them as they move forward in their careers”. I thought Agnew was supposed to be highly rated??
There just seems to me to be nobody coming through - I think the last one to come through would be p**s biscuit
Our U21's have been top of their league and are only going to lose out to Man Utd late on. Pretty good effort it'd say. There's a handful of good young players coming through. Greenwood, Honeyman, Gooch, Robson as well as Watmore & Pickford who have been in the first team this season. Granted they're not in the first team but there's some prospects there for sure.
Problem is we have never been in a comfortable position to bring the kids in, so they get little or no chance to improve at senior level. Just hope we stay up get mid table next season so we can give a few of them some time on the park otherwise I fear for the likes of Greenwood and Gooch.
Other teams seem to find gems, whats wrong with us, even when there is a opportunity to give a player a run out it is never taken.
We've been scraping around the bottom for four years now. If you're heading towards gaining a precious point say in February and get an injury would you have the nerve to try a 20 year-old? I'm not so sure I would. I have been hounded (more or less 'Bart-style', though it's unfashionable to say so in their case) by Tel and Bri for saying this club is in pretty decent shape at under-21, under-18 and Ladies levels, but we are being constantly let down by the first team, and whether they like it or not, I'll stick to it. Get us to say 13th and if we're in the same position in February, our manager has a fighting chance. He can then afford to try a new kid. As things are with our first team, the managers' hands have been tied. Get that first team right and a lot of doors can open.
There was a lot of surprise and disappointment that we let Noble and Lang go a couple of seasons ago, but maybe the Academy staff are more astute than we think.
I'm sure he is the lad who went to school with my son, and he said that Agnew was a fantastic footballer..
Totally right -if all goes well by May we have the brave manager to give our young guns the opportunities they deserve. I feel certain we will have challenges at the other end of Premier next year --onwards & upwards May well be many young diamonds comming through at U 18 level . The released lads need a footballing future - not waste their footballing formative yrs in U21 obscurity or bench warming
I still remember the introduction of Rowell, Arnott and Elliot into our first team, by Jimmy Armstrong, at one of its lowest ebbs, the impact these unknown kids had on that season was tremendous, and who knows how these kids might step up to the challenge if given a chance.
Yeh remmember it well We were in despatation stakes but they came in and we won games by high scores Still went down though Urgg
Other problem is that the u21 league is just that. A place only for the kids. Most of them are league 1 standard at best. Getting rid of the reserves stopped the kids getting good experience (well done to the premier league for that) If you don't play against decent opposition, you don't improve. Imagine if these kids had been playing alongside a team including oshea and Larsson? Players who aren't playing. That's how it used to be and the reserve players improved and succeeded a lot more than they do now
Relegated yes, but it was an heroic effort non the less, in the second half of the season only Liverpool had a superior record if I remember correctly, and it was their rivals Everton who sent us down last day of the season.
