Marcos Lopes

[Bridge'srightfoot]

There are certain players who never get a mention amongst all these 'wonderkids'. Such as Devante Cole & Jordi Hiwula for example.

Of course Lopes & Iheanacho are younger, & have a bit of 'wow' factor about them, & we have a bit of a queue of potential star kids coming up behind, but these lads have been quietly opening up defences & scoring goals for a few years now. Cole has developed from a simple striker to someone who can play right across the front 3 & keeps setting up goals, & Jordi keeps scoring them.

I know our standards are very high now, but sometimes players just take to the job when given an opportunity.

Many reservewatchers don't hold out high hopes for them, but I hope we give these two a chance & don't just write them off. We saw that little shit Hernandez come off the bench & win points for the rags, & we have seen Wellbeck fill a position for them many times.

A couple of young, quick, goalscoring forwards off the bench may be just the ticket sometimes rather than bringing on an established player who needs a rest.

But what must the likes of Hiwula and Cole think when they were not even selected for a place on the bench for the second leg against West Ham when we were 6-0 up on aggregate?
I feel the club has been too hesitant to give youth a chance in the past. At some point you just have to throw them in and see if they sink or swim.
Look at the impact Sterling has had for L'pool, i'm sure we have equally if not more talented kids in our ranks.

[Ted Hughes]

There are certain players who never get a mention amongst all these 'wonderkids'. Such as Devante Cole & Jordi Hiwula for example.

Of course Lopes & Iheanacho are younger, & have a bit of 'wow' factor about them, & we have a bit of a queue of potential star kids coming up behind, but these lads have been quietly opening up defences & scoring goals for a few years now. Cole has developed from a simple striker to someone who can play right across the front 3 & keeps setting up goals, & Jordi keeps scoring them.

I know our standards are very high now, but sometimes players just take to the job when given an opportunity.

Many reservewatchers don't hold out high hopes for them, but I hope we give these two a chance & don't just write them off. We saw that little shit Hernandez come off the bench & win points for the rags, & we have seen Wellbeck fill a position for them many times.

A couple of young, quick, goalscoring forwards off the bench may be just the ticket sometimes rather than bringing on an established player who needs a rest.

But what must the likes of Hiwula and Cole think when they were not even selected for a place on the bench for the second leg against West Ham when we were 6-0 up on aggregate?
I feel the club has been too hesitant to give youth a chance in the past. At some point you just have to throw them in and see if they sink or swim.
Look at the impact Sterling has had for L'pool, i'm sure we have equally if not more talented kids in our ranks.

That was last season.

I wouldn't especially have recommended them playing last season nor most of the others. Lopes got his chance in that game & probably Pozo would have done had he remained fit; those two were better than the rest in development imo. Cole & Hiwula have started to come on further since then, & we are seeing Denayer & Greg Leigh in the pre season.

This season I would expect one or two of the EDS to start getting an occasional game if they are at the club. But just today I've seen that Bolton want Cole, so that could be a great loan move for him. Same may happen to others & we may be left with only a few who are good enough to even be considered.

You also have to take into account the physicality of the Premier League. I would play half the U18s in the first team squad this season if they were built like Micah Richards. They are good enough as footballers.

[Ted Hughes]

I may be looking through blue tinted spectacles, but I feel we are in a much stronger position than Arsenal were, if we did find ourselves in that situation.

I'll try to expand on my reasoning behind that when I get a minute later.

Looking forward to reading it!

It's not going to be that exciting !

Ok remember this ?

http://talksport.com/magazine/features/ ... e-they-now

I watched that game with my head in my hands, despairing at how City were such a disjointed shambles & an Arsenal side built mainly from kids, totally outclassed us. Everyone talked of the future & how Arsenal would build their team from within, but when you look at the players they actually had coming though, they had a couple of stars & a bunch of no marks, who happened to play in a higher level football style than we were capable of.

At the same time, the Arsenal first team was reaching its end, with most of the top players about to move on.

They were right up their own arses believing all the bullshit, but meanwhile the rags & Chelsea were getting on with the job of winning stuff, & then a few years later, to Arsenal's horror, we arrived on the scene.

But look at those worldbeating kids they were relying on. You had Flamini, Van Persie & Fabregas, fair enough. But look at the rest;

JUSTIN HOYTE, PHILLIPE SENDEROS, JERMAINE PENNANT, SEB LARSSON , RYAN SMITH , ARTURO LUPOLI , DANIEL KARBASSIYOON, QUINCY OWUSU-ABEYIE, JOHAN DJOROU.

None of them are good enough to be squad players for us. And the ones who followed were no better on the whole. So they basically 'produced' 3 top players & several generations of fuck all. Then signed a few from Southampton etc.

I recon we have coming through, year after year of better players than that lot. & I also think we have a plethora of players who COULD reach the same level as Fabreagas etc, or maybe even better. (note: COULD) I also think we are much better coached now than Arsenal were then. That gap narrowed even before the Spaniards arrived. From being a bunch of kids running around headlessly whilst Arsenal's kids passed it, we became as good or better than them in possession & that happened a while back. A few seasons ago for example, Guidetti was way better by comparison than most of Arsenal's side, when we played them. Since then, it could be just down to a few years of us having vintage talent, but when I've seen Ciy in comparison to Arsenal kids in recent years, we have looked a whole level above as footballers & in style, (as we do v many teams whatever the result).

If there was ever going to be a Premier League team who could actually do what Arsenal THOUGHT they were going to do, I would say it's us.

We will almost certainly have to sign players, (I'm not convinced there's a Vinny coming through for instance, so we're not exactly solid at any age group) but I really fancy we will see a lot of home grown players in our first team squad in the next ten years, & we will be able to concentrate our spending on certain positions.

I doubt we will need to do what Arsenal tried to do, but I recon there's a chance it may happen anyway, just because of the sheer number of quality kids we have. I know this rarely happens, but it's almost impossible to imagine a bunch won't make it; there are just too many good ones at the club & more arriving all the time.

I recon we have more talented kids at the club now, than all the best kids in all the years I supported City pre takeover, put together (40 odd years worth). I can't even keep track of them. That doesn't mean all our teams will win every week but the talent is there; we just have to develop it correctly.

(And some are English!) There's an English lad in the U15s I think it is, ok anything could happen but to compare him with others I've seen over the years at the same age; fucking hell is all I can say.

[john68]

Ted,

Some years ago, I read an in depth study regarding the composition of teams that had won the FA Youth Cup from its inception and traced what had happened to the personnel of those teams. The conclusion was that hardly any of those young succesful teams made the transition to becoming successful at senior level.

A similar study looked at young England squads over the years and again the conclusion was that; whatever the level of success of the younger England squads, it never reflected success at the senior level.

It also concluded that because of the amount of football played, the vast majority of individual youngsters actually reached their peak around the age of 18-20yrs and never really improved from there as senior players.

[twosips]

Well we know that there has been a problem with youth coaching in England for decades. It's terrible. Hence why what past fa youth cup teams did, who were most likely set up to win at all costs ignoring important technical development, is largely irrelevant.

I think youth coaching is slowly changing for the better though in this country and teams are finally cottoning on to the fact that you can't just build em big and strong and expect that to be enough. England's youth 'success' is a good example. We do okay cos we had bigger, quicker lads who could physically impose themselves on the smaller more technical teams... but when they grow up the rest of the countries are just as big physically but better technically.

[Ted Hughes]

In reply to both posts; I agree with every word by Twosips & I think there is a big improvement by some clubs, after years of incompetence but I watched England's kids win a tournament recently v Holland & ours were big, strong, fast, & tbf skilled on the ball, but we just all charged head first until it went in. The Dutch played football & even their lesser playes therefore have a head start over the best of the English ones.

John, I see the time between the U18s & the first team as the biggest threat to my hopes of bringing players through. I have no faith in previous reports though, as they were often commissioned & compiled by morons & jobsworths, for the consuption of idiots running the show. Greg Dyke tbf has tried to address it but was given short shrift in that area. I believe we will foster close ties with other clubs to try & solve it by loans etc.

If we go back to the time our pre academy FA youth cup winning side, around then we had Lake, Redmond, Brightwell, Hinchcliffe, Scott, Simpson, White, Moulden, Beckford, Beresford etc all come through at the same time. If they were coached by Pellegrini, with modern Premier League fitness methods, rather than 80s 'lump it & run after it then let's go for a pint' 1st Div methods, half of them would be at least as good as our squad players now & one or two would be stars.

Then Ferguson put Kiddo in charge of fucking us up, & grabbing the next generation & they found half a Champions League winning squad. If both clubs can find so many players, it proves that it can be done. Then the academy system kicked in, & neither club has found hardly anyone of any quality ever since.

The pisscan said the whole thing was a load of shit & I argued against that at the time, believing we were producing players. We were; Joey Bartons. I came to realise he was dead right. It was a breeding ground for lazy arsed, criminal, big headed fucking wasters all round the country, coached by nobodies, philistines & more jobsworths making a living from it.

Our academy now is a different matter entirely, in all respects & soon it will be based with the first team building a bridge between the two. That will effectively be the first time the modern academy machine has been properly 'switched on'. We have had one season of warming it up with Pellegrini etc, but previous to that, Mancini didn't give a flying fuck about it, just saw it as a way of getting more of his people into the club to strengthen his power base & even put his fucking shit kids & their shit mate in the teams. Before that, Khaldoon & Marwod were setting it up.

I do have a concern about that period between 18 to 21, but I think we will find a way through it & I think ten years from now we will be talking of a golden age of 'home produced' players having a fair proportion of our squad places (and wondering why none of them get into the England team rather than huge, big eared, clumsy shit rags/scousers/cockneys).

[Cocacolajojo1]

I watched that game with my head in my hands, despairing at how City were such a disjointed shambles & an Arsenal side built mainly from kids, totally outclassed us. Everyone talked of the future & how Arsenal would build their team from within, but when you look at the players they actually had coming though, they had a couple of stars & a bunch of no marks, who happened to play in a higher level football style than we were capable of.

At the same time, the Arsenal first team was reaching its end, with most of the top players about to move on.

They were right up their own arses believing all the bullshit, but meanwhile the rags & Chelsea were getting on with the job of winning stuff, & then a few years later, to Arsenal's horror, we arrived on the scene.

But look at those worldbeating kids they were relying on. You had Flamini, Van Persie & Fabregas, fair enough. But look at the rest;

JUSTIN HOYTE, PHILLIPE SENDEROS, JERMAINE PENNANT, SEB LARSSON , RYAN SMITH , ARTURO LUPOLI , DANIEL KARBASSIYOON, QUINCY OWUSU-ABEYIE, JOHAN DJOROU.

None of them are good enough to be squad players for us. And the ones who followed were no better on the whole. So they basically 'produced' 3 top players & several generations of fuck all. Then signed a few from Southampton etc.

I recon we have coming through, year after year of better players than that lot. & I also think we have a plethora of players who COULD reach the same level as Fabreagas etc, or maybe even better. (note: COULD) I also think we are much better coached now than Arsenal were then. That gap narrowed even before the Spaniards arrived. From being a bunch of kids running around headlessly whilst Arsenal's kids passed it, we became as good or better than them in possession & that happened a while back. A few seasons ago for example, Guidetti was way better by comparison than most of Arsenal's side, when we played them. Since then, it could be just down to a few years of us having vintage talent, but when I've seen Ciy in comparison to Arsenal kids in recent years, we have looked a whole level above as footballers & in style, (as we do v many teams whatever the result).

If there was ever going to be a Premier League team who could actually do what Arsenal THOUGHT they were going to do, I would say it's us.

We will almost certainly have to sign players, (I'm not convinced there's a Vinny coming through for instance, so we're not exactly solid at any age group) but I really fancy we will see a lot of home grown players in our first team squad in the next ten years, & we will be able to concentrate our spending on certain positions.

I doubt we will need to do what Arsenal tried to do, but I recon there's a chance it may happen anyway, just because of the sheer number of quality kids we have. I know this rarely happens, but it's almost impossible to imagine a bunch won't make it; there are just too many good ones at the club & more arriving all the time.

I recon we have more talented kids at the club now, than all the best kids in all the years I supported City pre takeover, put together (40 odd years worth). I can't even keep track of them. That doesn't mean all our teams will win every week but the talent is there; we just have to develop it correctly.

(And some are English!) There's an English lad in the U15s I think it is, ok anything could happen but to compare him with others I've seen over the years at the same age; fucking hell is all I can say.

Haha, Cygan!!!! How did that chant go? Nananana he's shit, he plays when noone's fit!"

Thanks for the post. I really hope you're right and we get things going with youth players.

I read an article a few years back that followed the Swedish U19 team and they faced the English team at that level and several of the Swedish players were anxious even before the game started because the English players were much bigger and well trained than them. I guess that observation fits your, that the English youth teams excel at things that make them better than other youth teams but doesn't teach them skills that help them progress onto the senior scene.

For what it's worth the period between 16-17 and 20 always seems to be a tricky one and as I've posted before, a period in their career when most players struggle and only a few of them handle that struggle by working even harder. For players in that age to make a progression into the senior team you need a situation like City's back in teh days, when there was little alternative if we were to make the wage bill work, or a succesful but furthermore stable operation when there's a solid plan for having youth players in the first team backed up with a tight cooperation between the first team and the academy or in our case, the EDS and the academy. Pellegrini used very few EDS players last season but that probably was because it was his first season. Now he has 2/5 trophies and has less pressure, I would be seriously disappointed if there isn't more room for Cole, etc. Very disappointed even.

[Ted Hughes]

Struggled today but it must be soul destroying playing with these cunts. Really fucking shit players. Intma has just been given 6 minutes to sort it out.