Just out of interest I looked at the stats for our 1st Team, Reserves & U.18's and how many games we have won this season. It showed me just how bad we are and a common thread running through all the teams. We are rubbish at all levels. We have played a total of 55 matches, including tonights defeat by Derby U.21's. and won a grand total of 14 matches 1st team P.23 W5 U.21's P.14 W3 U.18's P.18 W6 Looking at the stats it would appear we have a losing mentality throughout our club and this needs changing fast before our younger players get in the habit of just accepting losing as a norm.
We need to start playing weaker teams. The first team seem to be working well towards this goal. They need to pass their experience on to the young lads.
Your youth teams are ****e because your Academy hasn't been up for scratch, but you've just gained cat1 status(took you long enough) As of your next recruitment you can take young uns from a much wider net improving the pool you pick from and they've got better facilities and more qualified coaches to work with. You should start seeing some results over the next three years if it's well funded. Short plowed investment into our already cat1 youth system about 3 years back, now we've 6 differant youth products who've made the match day squad two who've started in the league, we're top of the U21 league and our u18s are sowing year on year improvement. We're on the verge of our own golden generation. Very unheard of for us. You just need to be paitiant for a few years with the youth squad and should see significant improvement.
We do have a losing mentality. And it all starts in preseason year after year. Chelsea travel to asia and thump some company side 7-0 we go to league 1 or championship sides 1 week before their season starts and lose 1-0. Everyone knows for team spirit in pre season you go and thump someone 3-4 nil.
Its a bit rotten within the club at present. The whole club is on a bit of a downward spiral. It is very interchangeable though at the junior levels if you look at last couple of years: 2014-2015 North Division Pos Club Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Qualification 1 Middlesbrough U18s 22 16 2 4 59 30 +29 50 Group A 2 Everton U18s 22 13 2 7 49 30 +19 41 3 Manchester City U18s 22 12 4 6 45 29 +16 40 4 Manchester United U18s 22 12 2 8 29 24 +5 38 5 Wolverhampton Wanderers U18s 22 11 4 7 38 36 +2 37 Group B 6 Derby County U18s 22 8 9 5 47 36 +11 33 7 Liverpool U18s 22 8 5 9 51 51 0 29 8 Sunderland U18s 22 8 5 9 33 35 −2 29 9 Newcastle United U18s 22 6 3 13 36 50 −14 21 Group C 10 Blackburn Rovers U18s 22 5 5 12 31 50 −19 20 11 Stoke City U18s 22 5 4 13 23 39 −16 19 12 Bolton Wanderers U18s 22 3 5 14 22 53 −31 14 2013-2014 North Division Pos Club Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Qualification 1 Manchester City U18s 31 22 4 5 87 40 +47 70 Qualification to Knockout stage 2 Everton U18s 31 20 2 9 62 41 +21 62 3 Liverpool U18s 31 15 5 11 69 59 +10 50 4 Manchester United U18s 31 15 3 13 60 51 +9 48 5 Newcastle United U18s 31 15 2 14 49 57 −8 47 6 Sunderland U18s 31 13 6 12 54 43 +11 45 7 Wolverhampton Wanderers U18s 31 10 7 14 47 65 −18 37 8 Middlesbrough U18s 31 11 3 17 50 62 −12 36 9 Bolton Wanderers U18s 31 10 3 18 49 74 −25 33 10 Blackburn Rovers U18s 31 8 5 18 61 84 −23 29 11 Stoke City U18s 31 6 6 19 34 61 −27 24 It changes on a year to year basis depending what is picked up. There are some constants there though with Everton, Man U and Man C. They are the clubs to be looking at, especially Everton given their record of producing players who actually go on. The North West clubs are blatantly well ahead generally. The 21's is a bit of a strange one. Normally its dominated by the likes of Man C, Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool - is that representative of their academy strength or just the populating of it with young foreign talent while playing the big guns for fitness who can't get in their match day squad because of numbers? Probably a bit of both. One thing for sure is we have work to do. We have had some come through of course and Aarons looks an amazing talent having been plucked from Bristol at 16/17, while Armstrong looks sure to do well. Its not exactly rich pickings.
No doubt we'll have a pre-season tour of North America arranged again...playing the likes of Tombstone Tornadoes or some other illustrious name...
It does appear to everyone looking in at the club that every single decision made is wrong or ill timed. Whether it be who is appointed as manager/coach, the selection of the first 11 and formation to the varying financial and commercial decisions, our youth academy is full of dross, why waste time on players who are not going to make that step up, further our reach now we have Cat 1 or appoint competent coaches that are able to nurture and get the best out of raw young talent. Im not being funny, but Carrol was hardly ever talented, yet made us £35m we should be able to roll at least one of those out every 5 years! The decision to also take such a small number of the Chelsea away allocation is just another slap in the face of supporters, the club on recoup £1 management fee for these tickets so (correct me if im wrong) but the club only accepted 1000.00 tickets out of the 3000.00 available. As a southern based fan, this makes it increasingly difficult to see my team and makes me wonder why I pay a membership. Ultimately the blame should be pointed at Charnley, either he is signing off or making the majority of decisions, or her is appointing the wrong people. It’s not good enough to throw £100m at players that an incapable scout recommends just to hopefully manage to hover over the relegation zone come May. It’s not the right way to run a club and we wouldn’t have to spend £100m a year if we just did everything properly.
And when we're talking about stats let's not forget the wonders of the injury league table: http://injuryleague.com/injury-league/ please log in to view this image Last updated 20th January 2016 New for 2016: We’ve changed the look of our table to better show how teams are separated with respect to the number of weekly injuries Even Physioroom has given up trying to keep track of our injuries and claims we only have 3 whereas in fact we have a very decent Championship team on the treatment table Krul Mbabu Williamson Dummett Haidara Colback Anita De Jong Obertan Cisse Toney Sub Good (from: http://www.premierinjuries.com/)
The way the page browsed here on my laptop I was unable to find Newcastle anywhere. Until I started to scroll up. And up. And up. Bloody Nora, is all that I can say. Are they still counting Michael Owen in there?
How the **** did Toney get ankleligament injury? That's something you get when someone tackles you or you jump and roll your ankle. What the ****? Also Anita was supposed to be back end of January, that says end of Feb. And what the hell happened to Willo anyway?
