Last night I was having an argument with two good friends (palace fan and Liverpool fan) about academy's started by my palace mate who stated palace have a youth system everybody is envious of! I kindly pointed out the recent success of the fulham youths teams and insisted we now have arguably the best youth system in the country and any season now we are going to have loads of youngsters coming into the first team squad! This is what I'm waiting and hoping for even if it was met by derision! Anyway my point ..... We looked at the England u21, u19, u18 and u16 squads and could only find one fulham player Patrick Roberts in the u16s. I know a lot of our youngsters are foreign and i tried to make this point but alcohol had set in. Despite still believing I'm right it did not help my argument against my two mates and was shouted down big time ( the lager) didn't help this Surely we have some English youngsters???
Dan Burn, Stephen Arthurworrey and Cauley Woodrow spring to mind. I can see the issue with regards the nationality of our youngsters. But honestly, I don't really care about that. As long as we start bringing youngsters through our Academy and up to the first team, I don't care how many of them are English. Do you think Barcelona fans care than Messi is Argentinian, or that he's an amazingly talented player than has come through the ranks with them? Check out one of C58's internationals threads to see how our youngsters are represented, it's a nice insight into the talent in our Academy.
Surlyc. The nationality doesn't bother me at all I'm just pleased we have gone down the route of trying to get youngsters into the first team squad! It was more surprise than anything else just thought there would be a few more that's all!! I can see from other threads you follow the youngsters closer than most, do you think anyone one is on the verge of breaking into the first team this season coming or anyone you believe definitely will over the next few seasons? On a lot of the transfer threads people are crying out for us to sign a creative midfielder, reading posts Muanmar tankovic ( excuse spelling) sounds ready made for that role?
Just spent a pleasant hour in the garden reading the suggested thread! Great thread and very informative
Barca fans don't care about Messi being foreign because the rest of their team is Spanish! Seriously though, of course we all put the quality of the squad(s) first, but it would be nice to have a few more English lads in there. And good call on Burn, Arthurworrey and Woodrow - I always get Cauley mixed up with Corey Gameiro, who of course is Aussie and also gone!
I suspect that Barca fans, being largely Catalan, don't regard themselves or their local players as in any way Spanish. But I know what you mean, Bidders.
As well as those mentioned, other English players are: At U18 level - Josh Passley and Tom Richards At U21 level - Charlie Banya, Alex Brister, Marcus Bettinelli and Richard Peniket (who although born in Bromsgrove has opted to play for Wales U21). And just to confirm Bandit's query, Tom Donegan is a scouser so he 'scrapes' in. There's also a fair number of Welsh lads in the Academy (eg Jordan Evans and George Williams) as well as Irish (eg Sean Kavanagh, Noe Baba and Liam Donnelly)
Don't forget the academy goes down to the really younger age groups too. We will probably have to wait for a couple of years for this to filter in to the England set up. It will happen though imo. Also, there have been a lot of players in the England youth set up that don't make it to the big time. Is it a good benchmark to set? That's not me being critical, just asking.
