Madness is so right about this. Seems to me that the Club drifted into the Championship treating it as a 38 game competition, with nice and neat alternate home and away fixtures. Rather than the scattergun of fixtures and the forty-six, three games a week (virtually every week) League that it is. Perhaps worse, they seem to have viewed it almost as a Reserve Division and assumed that it would be hunky dory to move our younger squad of players up one level. Okay you could lay a lot of this warped thinking at Felix’s door and say that Kit had to get on with the pieces he inherited. Might be true of the first team but not the Academy. And I seriously worry about the damage that has been done to the Academy over the last year. The Club appears to have lost direction and completely forgotten that the “Academy” is in fact the Development Squad. It’s not about a manager trying to prove what a whiz he is by introducing fancy systems or fiddling with team selection. It’s about helping young players learn their trade and improve their skills. To digress a moment - take players going out on loan; this shouldn’t be about getting ’game time’, it should be about learning how to fit into a team and learning from seasoned professionals. Back to the Academy proper and taking a couple of examples from last night’s game against Man United to illustrate where things have gone wrong: * Young Tayo Edun has had really good games for the U18s at left back, so much so that he’s been selected for the England U17 Euro squad. What do we do? We bung him in midfield for the U21s . And he was completely out of his depth (he’s been stuck in there for the previous games against Porto and Sunderland with a similar fate). * Not all, but far too many of the team failed to demonstrate very basic stuff that makes a footballer better than average. Stuff like ‘pass and move’, ‘make a diagonal run to pull defenders out of position’. I could go on … Earlier I suggested that the bulk of the blame rests with Felix. Well actually, I think at least some of it should fall on Kit’s shoulders. Have you seen the 1st Team squad list? It barely fits onto the back page of the match day programme. The U21 list in their programme for last night is very similar. In reality though, both lists are made up of players who happen to have had a game for the respective teams. That’s no way to run a Club. That’s not stability. When he took over Kit should have been much more strategic and created a ’core’ of 1st team and U21 team players from that main squad list and rotated them appropriately. Each team should have been a blend of youth and experience. Instead it’s as if they were disparate units. For the Academy it’s been a terrible season. The U21s have never had a settled side; players have been regularly played out of position; 16 and 17 year olds have been thrown into the deep end - not just individually but together. The consequence is inevitably going to be relegation. That means a lower grade of football for them and creates an even bigger gulf to cross over to the first team - certainly one greater than has existed in the last few years. The U18s have already slipped a League and while the talent is still coming through (so far) you’d be hard pushed to find many of them anywhere near the age necessary to sign professional forms. And again a bigger and bigger gap is being created between them and the team at the level above Somebody at the Club - Mr Rigg presumably since he’s been championed as the one with total responsibility for football matters - needs to sit down and get a grip of the bigger picture. And that most definitely includes how to coach and develop our youngsters. A start might be to re-name the U21s . Perhaps change it to the ‘Elite Squad‘ - as Man City and West Ham do. Or perhaps simply to the ‘Development Squad‘ - which is what it should be.
Very worrying - I think Rigg is the bloke that was a laughing stock at qpr first time round for Fernandez
Totally agree Cottager, I used to enjoy going down to MP to watch the academy games and training sessions, but over the last few months apathy and incompetence rules. As I said on another posting Ali Mac , if he is holding the chairman's footballing reins must have a clear out, and quickly.
