What,s the point

[Robinho_Is_GOD]

Who gives afook if all the so called youth get a chance and we get relegated press the foookin buzzer shit post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eeceedingly astute explanation. Good use of the English language

[Abu Dhabi]

What,s the point?

I think it is "what's the comma?"

[MOONIN]

Who gives afook if all the so called youth get a chance and we get relegated press the foookin buzzer shit post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eeceedingly astute explanation. Good use of the English language

Thankyou i do live in Inverness Ya ken

[Pretty Boy Lee]

Hang on I'm lost, I though RH and RIG were the same person.

As for the OP, home grown players have a special place in our hearts, lets never lose that. Yeah if they don't make it ship em out, but if they do it makes it that little bit more special seeing a star shine that we can consider a "blue".

[Scatman]

Hang on I'm lost, I though RH and RIG were the same person.

As for the OP, home grown players have a special place in our hearts, lets never lose that. Yeah if they don't make it ship em out, but if they do it makes it that little bit more special seeing a star shine that we can consider a "blue".

Ha Ha, so I'm not the only one.

As for the OP, the academy is there for when we get banned for life from buying any players

[Dronny]

...of City having a youth team and a reserve team, as when it comes to replacing players from the first team when sold we buy from other teams, on this website there are two examples it is quoted that Robinho could be leaving in January or at the end of the season to Barca, if that is the case then we will be chasing Frank Ribery also Mica is not happy and he too may be leaving, then it is reported that we could be after Philip Lham. So could anybody tell me why we are spending money on doing up Carrington for our youth team and reserves when we are not using those players to bring through to the first team, it would seem money is being wasted. In the past players like Young, Doyle, Oakes and Pardoe came through to the first team, now the present players such as Weiss, Trippier, Ball and Mack will not get a chance for regular first team under the present incumbent. So I ask again what is the point of having a youth and reserve team.

Newcastle under Keegan (?) when they decided to do away with their reser's and youth policy? I seem to remember that very quickly backfired on them and they soon changed their policy.

I loved the fact that we were able to bring through the likes of Young, Doyle, Oakes and Pardoe as you mention,but we are no longer the same club, our position at the pinnacle of the English game has changed beyond belief. If you are that disenchanted then there is an acronym that isn't used so much these days in the employment arena....FIFO. I'm not suggesting you do, but your views are not going to make our owners change their mind.

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

Let's be realistic here. At the level we are, if we can bring one player every other year as regular, The Academy will have been giant success. Added to that, if we can bring one squad player every other year, it will be bonus.

Right now we have Ireland, Micah, SWP, Nedum and Weiss pretty much regulars in squad. There's not many teams that can math that.

[ant london]

The simple fact is that we have had an academy that been amazingly successful but essentially it was one that was "fit for purpose" for a club with mid-table ambitions and outside chances of a good cup run (...and at the very outside, maybe a Europa Cup season or two). The academy has an unbelievable track record in getting academy graduates into the first team.....it has an even better track record in nurturing kids who go on to earn their living as professional footballers (at some level).

However, the simple fact is that although we have indeed produced the likes of Ireland, SWP, Johnson, Micah, Nedum, Sturridge, Weiss etc etc we have not produced one real superstar. If Stevie gets his form back and excels for 7 or 8 more years he would arguably be the first. But, currently, even he is short of hitting the levels of product that, say, West Ham United's academy has turned out (certainly Lampard and Ferdinand....also Joe Cole and Michael Carrick in terms of how long he's done it at the top level for)

Then came massive wealth and we have recruited (as the club and, on this thread John78 have stated) a different calibre of playing staff. One which, on paper, should certainly challenge for the Top 4 and which, in effect, doesn't look that far off from challenging for the title.

Accordingly, a MASSIVE shift in emphasis in the academy has been required. We need to be producing the likes of Ireland, Johnnno, SWP, Micah, Nedum....on a pretty routine basis. We also need to now be aiming to find (wherever they are in the world) the likes of future Torres, Villa, Essien, Gerrard, Messi, Ronaldo, Aguero.....

Players we can produce who are the level of our current best graduates will still be able to play a role in the squad game here at City...absolutely. But to guarantee them to be regulars in our first team there will have to be an uplift in quality.

From what we know of the talent we have been snapping up in the last 12 months or so I would say that process is certainly underway. But it is a process and it is long term planning. I would not be too disappointed or overly surprised if we didn't see too many appearances from the youngsters for the next year or so as the academy goes about nurturing talent and getting kids ready for the first team.

This potential tie up with the French side that was in yesterday's papers, along with the multiple academy strategy and the reported scouting in south america are all signs that the club is raising the bar in terms of youth development both in scope and scale. If we operate a feeder club type approach with players being groomed in a competitive environment before being blooded in the first team here....well.....I think we all know that makes huge sense and lowers the risk of players being "broken" by excessive pressure and expectation as well as lowering the risk that a player turns out not to be ready from a performance level and we are carrying dead weight in games.

As to the question of what is the point of the academy. Well, as well as producing talent for our own first team it is clear that we will produce talent that won't be good enough and will be sold on....likely at a profit. So City will be giving those kids who do make it a great start in the game, or just a great standard of personal development/education...and the lucky few will get to pull on a sky blue shirt and experience what I'm sure most of us have dreamed of.

That's kinda the point of it all

[john@staustell]

Hang on I'm lost, I though RH and RIG were the same person.

As for the OP, home grown players have a special place in our hearts, lets never lose that. Yeah if they don't make it ship em out, but if they do it makes it that little bit more special seeing a star shine that we can consider a "blue".

Never thought I'd see them arguing about brands of negativity!!

If players are good enough they get through, at Barca, at City, end of.

If Richards cant cut it he gets shipped out. What is the problem there? Do we have to keep a quota of shite players if they came through the academy?

Remember the screams when we sold Etuhu, Mears, Croft, Flood, Jordan and a host of other types who weren't up to it, even by our old standards? 'Future of our club' they cried. Bollox.

[Ted Hughes]

We've been a mid table/relegation/skint club for decades, therefore the academy has been doing a fantastic job for MCFC producing players good enough to play in such a team & also producing income. If we want to see an example of where the Academy goes next, we need look no further than Barca. They spend fortunes on buying world class players but their best current players came from their academy. They are producing some world class players. They also learn the football philosophy of the club, passing & moving etc, there. Until Hughes, we haven't had a football philosophy at our club to teach, as previous managers weren't arsed about it; the academy has been divorced from the 1st team. Now the two are being connected.


I would expect it'll take time to change from one thing to the other but it's obvious the club are working bloody hard at it. Of course a club did win the PL league with a fair percentage of home grown players some years ago. The bloke that produced it now works for us.

[lythamblue]

The point is simple.

The Academy is there to develop and provide players which are better than what we have available in the first team.

As the standard of players who are available for the first team (whether currently playing for us or someone else) gets better and better, the Academy graduates will have to get better too.

Within a couple of years, any player coming through the Academy that is not considered to be a potential world class superstar will be sold of before he is 18 years old to make room for another potential prodigy.

I know the argument is that they will not get the chance to show and develop their potential, but how much chance do they need. I am sure that true world class players like Messi, Maradonna, Cruyf, Ronaldo etc were all identified from around 15 years of age anyway.

It would appear that if our own Academy graduates are not considered in the same ilk as the above mentioned superstars, there will be no place for them in our side either, and they will be left to progrees their careers elsewhere with us obtaining a fee which more than compensates us for their development so far.

Finally, I want a world class team that wins trophies and I'm not really that bothered anymore as to where they have come from.

[MaineRoadMemories]

There was this very debate on fivelive a few weeks ago. I was surprised to learn that many managers also say "what's the point" and are not remotely interested in academies. There were some interesting debates to what would happen without any and why the FA didn't invest more in Lilleshall.

Debate was had on whose responsibility it is to invest in youth. Is it the clubs, the FA or Schools? In the past everything came through schools, they trained kids to play footy and the schools league was super competitive. Scouts from the big clubs came down and watched the school matches and developed relationships with the best ones.

But since education went commercial PE lost all its budgets and cut down to the extent that hardly anyone bothers. Football Clubs picked up the gaunlet and now run academies. Many football clubs treat their own academies poorly and don't bother much.

The chat finished with a debate on why foreigners seem to be better than us at an earlier age, citing the appauling U-20's world cup performances over the last decade.

The conclusion was that kids in England have too many distractions to get in the way of playing with a ball and it was no coincidence that the best players to make it from south amercia et al are the poorest ones who don't have any else in life other than to play with a beat up old piece of leather for 10 hours straight all day every day.

[ronk]

There was this very debate on fivelive a few weeks ago. I was surprised to learn that many managers also say "what's the point" and are not remotely interested in academies. There were some interesting debates to what would happen without any and why the FA didn't invest more in Lilleshall.

Debate was had on whose responsibility it is to invest in youth. Is it the clubs, the FA or Schools? In the past everything came through schools, they trained kids to play footy and the schools league was super competitive. Scouts from the big clubs came down and watched the school matches and developed relationships with the best ones.

But since education went commercial PE lost all its budgets and cut down to the extent that hardly anyone bothers. Football Clubs picked up the gaunlet and now run academies. Many football clubs treat their own academies poorly and don't bother much.

The chat finished with a debate on why foreigners seem to be better than us at an earlier age, citing the appauling U-20's world cup performances over the last decade.

The conclusion was that kids in England have too many distractions to get in the way of playing with a ball and it was no coincidence that the best players to make it from south amercia et al are the poorest ones who don't have any else in life other than to play with a beat up old piece of leather for 10 hours straight all day every day.

The debate got off to a bad start then.

Clubs have their own interests that don't really tie with the needs of young men and boys. One of the reasons for our success is that we're not as ruthless and short sighted as some of the other academies. Some of the biggest success stories were players who a risk was taken on, like SWP and Agbonlahor. Narrowing the supply of players early risks missing more of these guys.

With a couple of notable exceptions it should be said that club controlled academies are fundamentally the wrong approach, but they're the guys with the money. They want to retain 100% control and any change will see a fight. It's only where there's tenure and consistency do the academy coaches even start trying to do the right thing in the long term.

When the star of your academy leaves to go to Chelsea after about a dozen games and you stand to make the same at tribunal as you did for a player sold into the Championship then it's easy to wonder what the point is. Even the players we've had to keep have required big early (and lengthy) contracts to fend off interest. You start to question the money savings when you're paying millions a year to guys like Johnson, and they're your success stories.

The regulations protecting clubs with academies are incredibly weak and only generate a return under certain circumstances. The whole thing is getting worse.

While clubs are fighting each other over players there's no real chance for the FA or for schools. The best places for these kids would be schools and non-professional clubs with coaching support provided by the clubs and/or the FA. But how do you resolve the issue of clubs wanting their players younger and younger?

[Twobob]

While clubs are fighting each other over players there's no real chance for the FA or for schools. The best places for these kids would be schools and non-professional clubs with coaching support provided by the clubs and/or the FA. But how do you resolve the issue of clubs wanting their players younger and younger?

I'm a firm believer in having a national setup with clubs supported and monitored or even ran entirely by the FA, impose an age limit arround 15 or 16 before clubs can take on youngsters from the national pool.

But for this type of thing to work we'd need to bring back propper sports back into schools - none of this none-competative namby pamby bull.

The sports in schools needs to be centrally invested in though to support this - cant see anything like this ever happening the way this countries going ...

[Beefymcfc]

Fuck me mate, you nearly had me believing that you were concerned for the Youth/Reserve teams then!!!

.......will not get a chance for regular first team under the present incumbent

[ronk]

While clubs are fighting each other over players there's no real chance for the FA or for schools. The best places for these kids would be schools and non-professional clubs with coaching support provided by the clubs and/or the FA. But how do you resolve the issue of clubs wanting their players younger and younger?

I'm a firm believer in having a national setup with clubs supported and monitored or even ran entirely by the FA, impose an age limit arround 15 or 16 before clubs can take on youngsters from the national pool.

But for this type of thing to work we'd need to bring back propper sports back into schools - none of this none-competative namby pamby bull.

The sports in schools needs to be centrally invested in though to support this - cant see anything like this ever happening the way this countries going ...

The opportunity was missed at the start of the prem to create a nationwide series of academies and fund clubs with local games or even leagues. Funding could have been ringfenced from the TV money to develop the game.

The clubs wouldn't agree to it now and would even undermine any attempt at national academies outside their control until they could agree on a way to sign players from the academies without descending into a free-for-all.

[Slim]

Well, we could do away with it, but our 25 man Champions League squad needs 4 homegrown players who spent 3 years at City between the ages of 16 and 21, and a further 4 who have done the same at any club in England (including City)

[Ted Hughes]

While clubs are fighting each other over players there's no real chance for the FA or for schools. The best places for these kids would be schools and non-professional clubs with coaching support provided by the clubs and/or the FA. But how do you resolve the issue of clubs wanting their players younger and younger?

I'm a firm believer in having a national setup with clubs supported and monitored or even ran entirely by the FA, impose an age limit arround 15 or 16 before clubs can take on youngsters from the national pool.

But for this type of thing to work we'd need to bring back propper sports back into schools - none of this none-competative namby pamby bull.

The sports in schools needs to be centrally invested in though to support this - cant see anything like this ever happening the way this countries going ...

The opportunity was missed at the start of the prem to create a nationwide series of academies and fund clubs with local games or even leagues. Funding could have been ringfenced from the TV money to develop the game.

The clubs wouldn't agree to it now and would even undermine any attempt at national academies outside their control until they could agree on a way to sign players from the academies without descending into a free-for-all.

Imo the coaching of very young kids is one of the biggest problems so any national system would have to have quality coaches all working with the same methods putting the emphasis on skill & enjoyment above all else at the youngest ages. I don't trust the FA to be able to appoint such people. It'd end up with the same neanderthals who've been ruining kids natural skills for the last 30 years, re packaged & doing it all again because they're all mates. They stay in work through every change; the same blokes swap from one club to another rather than being replaced even if they're useless in their previous post. A couple of phone calls & they're in a similar job somewhere else, sometimes at a higher level. Promoted for being shite.

I've heard it said that the remit of coaches at our academy will be to encourage & produce skill & enjoyment at kid's level then change the emphasis to include more importance in athleticism & tactics at a later age, then to pick out players who combine all the neccessary attributes to play in the PL. If what I've been told is true I think we'll be perfectly ok by doing that. What everyone else will be doing is a different question.

[Robinho_Is_GOD]

My point in asking the question was that not all the youth and academy players should get a game in the first team, just the ones who are on the brink of the first team, take Trippier for instance if city are looking for a right back why not play him in minor cup games and league games as a sub if he does not cut it, then buy not before, it works well for Arsenal their young side beat us a few years ago.

[Ted Hughes]

My point in asking the question was that not all the youth and academy players should get a game in the first team, just the ones who are on the brink of the first team, take Trippier for instance if city are looking for a right back why not play him in minor cup games and league games as a sub if he does not cut it, then buy not before, it works well for Arsenal their young side beat us a few years ago.

Because we're desperate to win a trophy & if Hughes rests a few players & we lose a game, like he did v Brighton, Forest & Fulham last season, people will go berserk & blame him rather than the players who come in, like they did last season. Once we start actually winning stuff, or if we get in the Chumps Lg, we will start to rest players in Lg Cup games next season. At the moment we need to give some of the 1st team squad games anyway, so they may figure v Scunthorpe possibly with Weiss getting on at some point.

Those players you mention are still very young & if they're really that good they'll get a chance at some point even if they have to go out on loan first. Beckham had to do that at their age & it didn't do him any harm.