I heard a guy at the Palace game say that Middlesbrough have 9 home-grown players in their first team squad - many in the starting line-up. He posed the question how many players have come through our system?? He has a point - recently Wilson and Ribeiro have come through, but neither are in the starting 11. In recent years we have had Skuse, Lita (all be it an acadamy transfer), Rosenior and Cotterill. Not a great return from a side in the FA Acadamy League is it?? Is part of the problem that they are not given a chance? I was a massive GJ fan, but one of his faults was his reluctance to play young home-grown players. Other clubs have reputations of giving youth a chance - for example Southampton, Middlesbrough, Watford etc. Arguably this means that parents of players with potential are more likely to let their sons go to the Acadamies of clubs like these as they will be given a chance - just look at the players that have come through their systems in the last 4-5 years. For much of this season we have not had a proper right back - why not play young Edwards?? I known McGivern is a left back, but why on earth are we playing a loan player who is no better than what we already have? We spend a lot of money on our Acadamy - in my view it's under performing.
There is no doubt our academy is amateur at best. The future of the club is all about producing talent, as we are not a millionaire club. If real money was spent on recruiting top coaches and a drive to attract the best kids to the club, it would be a better investment than spending it on finished articles. For the price of 1 top player we could have a premiership quality team in a few years
50 years ago City were chasing every kid who had any potential and signing them up. As Steve Wilson (ex-Filton United ; WBA trainee; etc) said, they turned up for a Saturday game to find that there were so many players standing around, that too often many of them didn't even get on the pitch. A wasted Saturday! Another problem for non-premiersip clubs is demonstrated by the Scott Sinclair scenario at Rovers. Nearly ten years developed as a youth to be whipped away for peanuts by Chelsea, before he was old enough to commit to Rovers.
Some of the many problems: - poor set up - lack of good coaches at every level - lack of good scouts finding the best talent early on - poor facilities - local schools not being committed to sport - no one in our first team capable of nurturing and inspiring younger players when they join the squad (i.e the likes of Giggs and Beckham had Cantona and Robson to learn from and aspire to) I played at the Centre of Excellence years ago - we had 2 main coaches trying to 'coach' about 30 teenagers once a week and we had 2 matches over the course of one season (one against Portishead, and one against Crystal Palace)!
Well in theory the facilities are now better? Is it a problem that kids are not as interested in football in the West (but if we use that excuse how do Southampton manage to get Bale, Walcott, Oxlaide-Chamberlain, Llalana etc etc)
I think the new stadium will be a bit more inspiring though. There's plenty of kids that are interested in football, and becoming professional when they are older, but they have more distractions than in many other countries, and we have great trouble encouraging excellence because everyones scared of upsetting the kids that aren't very good. I also find it hard to believe that the FA Level 1 coaching badge doesnt actually require you to have played football or even to have watched it before!
I'm suggesting we do the thing properly. It might be expensive, but would probably be worth every penny. Bring a disciple of the Spanish or French academy system to Bristol. Get him to help design the academy, and put some cash into the recruitment. And go for the best kids possible. The word would quickly get around that we were doing it properly, which would help to attract talent. In 4 years we could have a young team of gems coming through. It seems to me that SL has been spending a lot of money unwisely, that could have been put to better use. And if we are going to have a stadium which holds 30k people, lets put a team, and a club, in there to do it justice
