How good do you reckon they can be? Do you think ES sees pound signs or silverware images when he watches them, reads about them or hears about them. I'd like to think there could be a decent setup in 5 years time with this lot and the right amount of experienced players in place. One of the best examples in the past was the Manure class of '92 - Scholes, Beckham, Giggs, Butt and the Neville brothers. Look at their achievements. You would die for ten years of that. Does the club have the bottle to nurture them and try to see a promising future? I have my doubts. One last related point - AC Milan beat Lazio 3-1 on Sunday with a 16 year old goalkeeper between the posts. If you're good enough, you're old enough!
Your stark reality is, your better players will be poached and the lesser players will be flogged for peanuts to lower teams or released to the scrap heap. If your promising 'keeper has a brilliant time in the EPL for example, it'll only be a few years max before he's being fetched in to replace a top 'keeper on big wages, challenging every season for honours. Stoke is where I'll be looking if I'm a United scout, tasked with replacing David De Gea, Butland is right at the top of the tree as we speak. Everton resisted this summer, but it's only a matter of time before Stones is prized away from their clutch.
I think with the increased TV money coming in, the days of the big clubs such as Chelsea and Man City poaching all the other clubs young talent may be coming to an end..
Wishful thinking mate, City prizing Sterling away from Liverpool only shows the gulf is getting wider, when Liverpool become a 'smaller club' victim you know it's getting worse. Sterling is not going to set precedent for every player, but until agents are regulated or ideally banned, then it's going to get worse and worse.
I agree that agents need regulating as they are taking from the game without contributing anything. However, I sense a change coming which will hopefully level the playing field a little..
Obviously that's limited to the Premier League then? All good if you're part of it. Hopefully FIFA will be scrapped, replaced and when the new governing body comes in, agents are banned and then we can start looking at a more even playing field. By that time, the NHS will be privatised, so the Home Office will have a bigger budget, to tackle perverts and rapists and kids can start playing outside with footballs again kicking them against walls and we might see the next Paul Scholes Tragic.
For all their admirable achievements and ManU's subsequent success, the introduction of those kids at the same time was bordering on the totally fortuitous side as it was brought about by the departure of Ince, Hughes and Kanchelskis to Spain and Italy for bigger wages than ManU were willing to pay or could afford at the time. They could very well have made the first team eventually but not with the impact they made as a group.
We've got a very good team, but most won't make it to Prem level. I think three or four could break the first team for a little golden gen but we'll not know how good they can be for a while yet, still early days indeed.
