I am still bathing in the afterglow of going top of the whole of English football. What an incredible achievement even if it probably won't last for very long. Who cares!!! We all know about the home developed players we sold, many for a lot of money such as Walcott, Lallana, Chambers, Shaw and Bale. My question is slightly different, how many players did we consciously release because they weren't good enough as academy players, but have proven Saints wrong to prematurely let them go. How many players can you think of? I will start with these two 1. Tyrone Mings 2. Danny Ings
Didn’t know he went to the skates Roberts was born in Southampton, and joined his local club, Southampton F.C, as an associate schoolboy in October 1973, but failed to make the grade and was released, joining Portsmouth in March 1977.[1] He was sold to Dorchester Town where he impressed before joining local rivals Weymouth. From there he was sold to Tottenham Hotspur in May 1980 for £35,000.
Interestingly enough (or not), the day Saints released me they offered schoolboy terms to some twat from the NE... yeah, how did that one work out Saints? Got that one wrong didn’t you?!?! good call by Godders on Le Saux. He and I played for a Saints Youth Trialists team at some festival of football and had to march through the city centre.
Many, many years ago. Never got signed, but from 11-14 attending their training centres in Basingstoke and eventually Friday nights in the tiny gym under the main stand at The Dell (with a certain Sir Francis Benali and a somewhat suspect coach ). Never got offered to sign schoolboy forms and was released then. This would have been somewhere between 80-84 That tournament was around 85/86 when Le Saux and I played in a trial team.
I think I've asked you this before (and don't want to derail too much) but was Bob's antics well known amongst everybody at that time? A dark shameful period in our club's history.
He lived just around the corner from me on Weston Estate and his sisters played Rugby and were tougher than he was!... There was another Roberts (no relation) named Trevor who was the year above me at Weston Park who got rejected by Saints and played for Sholing Sports as a CB and eventually got signed by Pompey and played a handful of games for them when they were floundering in Div 4 in 1979. I went down to see him play once He is voted in this worst Pompey XI..good lad!.. https://portsmouth.vitalfootball.co.uk/worst-pompey-11/
