There were the same complaints about Koeman at Everton....he kept his distance from everyone and insisted on his own little rules, such as the team couldn't start eating until he and his coaching staff did. Obviously believed in running a tight ship rather than engendering team spirit.
Hard to say it didn't work here though, although personally I think it's over the top. I think he may have been proved right about the lack of talent in academy too.
No, players like Gallagher, Reed, Hesketh, Targett are all really good and should have been given loads more chances. Much like how some people say if Mark Hughes was called Hughesiola then fans would've been more excited about his appointment, if JWP was called Johannes Von Prowse and was signed from Hoffenheim fans would've wanted him gone awhile ago.
I don't really think that they could've done much worse than the **** that has been served up since the start of last season though.
Perhaps not, but the coaching staff clearly do otherwise they would've been given more chances. Whatever they see on a day to day basis tells them that they aren't as good as the players who have been playing. Those players I've listed are all in their early 20s now (23, 23, 22 and 23 respectively), in footballing terms they aren't kids anymore and really should be playing regularly somewhere at that age. Hojbjerg is 23 for example and has been playing pretty regularly since he was 20/21 (whenever he arrived here)
Don't get me wrong, the output of quality from the Academy has been well below standard for the money invested into it, that's why i'm so happy that Reed and Hunter have gone.
I don't know. Are the players listed really that bad? I mean (Hesketh aside) they have all been regulars at Championship teams when out on loan, some of them excelling at that level. I don't think having 3 players (+Stephens and JWP) in a couple of years playing to that level is really doing that badly. It is ****ing hard to be a PL level footballer, we can't just roll them out every year from the academy. To have 5 or so (and Hesketh) playing at Championship level at least is pretty good going. The thing we have stepped away from is that we aren't giving those players chances, even if they may not be good enough yet. As the first team has got worse we haven't been able to let the younger players have a go for their development. I think if we were comfortably sat in mid table we would've seen more of them.
We are well below the original 50% plus first team target that Cortese originally set when Staplewood was being developed and it was finished a few years ago now.
So is it the coaching that’s not up to scratch, or have the players themselves all been pretty ordinary?
Did you really believe that was going to happen if we were a PL club? If we were in the Championship then we would probably have it now, but for a PL team it is virtually impossible. What Cortese had right though was only buying a couple of big players each year and having the back ups in the squad being from the academy. We currently have a bloated squad of pretty average players (but still better than the academy players) meaning they never get any game time.
I never bought into that as it is so hard for a club like us to do that. You have to look at majority of other PL clubs as well. They all invest heavily in their academy and they aren't producing too many players for their first teams either. It is very hard to do.
But we did, and we most likely always will have to sell players like that, so to have the 50% they will have to be exactly good enough for where we are at the time. Not worse because we wouldn't want them and not better because they will leave to bigger clubs, it is why it is an unrealistic dream in the long term.
I suppose the irony is that we had to sell them to partly pay back the personal loan from Kat to finish Staplewood.
Why have we suddenly stopped producing players of that quality though?, the coaching must play a part.
The reason we haven’t was essentially because Markus died and Kat sacked Nicola, and we went from being a buying club which sold big occasionally, to a selling club who sold ALL our best talent, including several academy players. As SA says above, we would probably have reached the 50% target by now. The other factor is that the Academy has been run so badly for the last few years that it no longer attracts the potential stars it used to, and indeed many parents have removed their kids because of this.
