Viera has recently come out to say he believes English teams should have B teams and the u21s is not fit for purpose. Reed has said in the past that he prefered to keep players in house than send them on loan. Though that policy has clearly been scrapped. However his reasoning was because he wanted to control the coaching and the monitoring of the players development. The correct pathway for development is probably a mixture and the education should be varied.
Sending players on loan seems a good idea but not if they just sit on the subs bench or worse. Maybe we need to make sure, before we allow them to go, that they will get game time or say we will recall them. Stevens and Gallagher had to come back because it was pointless. Better to train them here if they aren't going to get any match time.
Academy featured on R4 at present. Our involvement in researching joint deformaties in young footballers.
Yes, heard that one. Good stuff. Here's a link for anyone: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ycr57 For those in a hurry, the main part of it starts about 8 minutes in.
Going back to performance against HTFC - let's give credit to the opposition, who I thought played really well and (think I read it in text comments alongside video on youtube) have gone 17 matches unbeaten. Easy to always blame the 'bigger' team playing badly when the 'smaller' team wins. I wonder where I have heard such comments recently??
Pleasantly surprised. Thought this was one that had already declared his intention to go to Arsenal. Then again perhaps he's seen how much 'bench time' Callum, Ox and Theo are getting! Incidentally the Ox is coming in for a lot of flak from Arsenal fans recently (particularly over his video-ed dance in the tunnel before our game which they thought showed he wasn't focussed on there match). Would not be surprised to see him become available in the summer but unlikely to take the drop in wages required to come here.
Well, Slattery is a beast of a CM on FM16, so if he can reach that potential, we'll be laughing (for about a year, then we sell him, but I'm not a selling manager on there)
I am glad we have someone coming through with potential as results from Academy Teams have been spiralling downwards at an alarming rate. I have watched a good number of U21 games and I have been sadly surprised how poor they are. The team no long tries to play in a similar formation or tactics as the first team so anyone trying to step up into the first team will be in for a real shock. The Academy management need to step up quickly and get our youth teams back on track and not loosing virtual every game recently even to lower league clubs like Huddersfield for goodness sack. This weekend the U18 got thumped by Arsenal too A worrying trend
You have to remember our academy players are not bought for millions. You also have to remember a lot of our under 21's are actually 18 so have plenty of time to get better. I can still see 5 maybe 6 players stepping up from the u21's given time. Also our under 18's has a lot of 16yr olds in it. Both our academy teams are very young compared to others. So I wouldn't be as worried as you sound.
It isn't necessarily the fact they are loosing particularly, it's the style (or lack of) of play. The lads do seem much lighter, slower and less robust than the opposition which may be down to them being younger than their counter parts but their formation and style is far removed from the first team
1 please log in to view this image GK Andrew McNeil 2 please log in to view this image DF Craig Richards 3 please log in to view this image DF Sebastian Wallis-Taylor 4 please log in to view this image FW David McGoldrick 5 please log in to view this image DF Sean Rudd 6 please log in to view this image DF Martin Cranie 7 please log in to view this image MF Lloyd James 8 please log in to view this image MF Tim Sparv 9 please log in to view this image FW Theo Walcott 10 please log in to view this image FW Leon Best 11 please log in to view this image MF Nathan Dyer Sub please log in to view this image FW Adam Lallana Sub please log in to view this image MF Feliciano Condesso Sub please log in to view this image DF Kyle Critchell Sub please log in to view this image DF Gareth Bale The above is our team for the 2005 FA Youth Cup Final, who also won the league that year. Results are a fair indicator on the quantity coming through. If you have 4-5 players who are capable of going on to play at the top level then you're likely to see good results.
DL - we have a first team a manger who has been changing fairly regularly how he first team play. How they supposed to follow that
The "normal" formation tends to be 4-2-3-1 with a pretty high press our recent five at the back was as a result of poor results. Saying that, if those are the two main formations, surely the youth teams should be schooled in both methods and play both at a competitive level. Looking at the recent results, maybe the youth teams need the five at the back too
