The issue is not just getting good young players through but getting decent players through so they can be sold if they don't work out. Woolwich managed to flog Iwobi for 30m+ and now they have Saka/Nelson/Wilock/Nketiah/Smith-Rowe these are just the ones who have broken out at the moment... a few of them will work out while the others are already developed enough to fetch a decent fee and essentially this is what we need.
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We used to do this all the time pre-Poch. The issue was we stopped loaning players out so they stopped getting minutes and exposure to help facilitate a sale. This is not an academy issue and I don't expect it to continue.
I'd agree but from what I have seen in the past 5 years, Woolwich, City, Chelsea, United and Liverpool have radically improved their academies and youth recruitment, both facility and results wise...
Woolwich and Chelsea have had a huge number of prospects perform well recently, and there is no reason our results shouldn't be similar considering we share recruitment pools for the most part.
I don’t know if that is recruitment, talent development or pipeline management honestly. I mean Tanganga couldn’t sniff the first team until a couple months ago. Now he may be considered our second best CB. Skipp is still raw but he should clearly be getting more minutes at DM since we have no one else.
We can’t play all of them and we will lose some, but there seems to be a talent identification gap right now.
Players like Kane is a once in a generation find. The English talent aint so much and we comete with many other clubs for it.
said it in other threads, in my lads school team they had 4 lads at local academies these boys trained 3/4 evenings a week, so you would expect them to shine out when they play in the school team, yet they looked little better than the lads that played Saturday football for local teams training 1 night a week
The production line itself is not the problem. The problem is as others have pointed out that there is a lack of direction from the academy from the first team. We lack a sporting director that can keep track of the youth players and decide when they are to start training with the first team. Right now the youth players are at the mercy of the manager, who doesn't realistically have the time to track both youth practices and first team practices.
I would agree with this...there seems to be this belief that the rest of the PL is producing star players and Spurs haven't. This isn't meant as a shot (ours is so much worse) but look at the English national team. There's not a ton of established talent developed in English academies. It's mostly guys like Alexander-Arnold and Hudson-Odoi that have maybe meaningful club appearances and are dazzling with their potential. But we've seen plenty of glittering young english footballers who never actually realize that potential. Woolwich used to specialize in those players.
Spurs' academy has produced some quality...just not easy to do consistently, you're at the mercy of fortune largely.
Just who are these superstars you are talking about at these clubs?
What constitutes a “superstar” in your mind?
And you do realise Harry Winks is a full England international? The pinnacle of professional football.
brother he's a little boy lost in that midfield with no control or influence.
Our academy is fine, we have produced a number of good players. Skipp was one of our better players last night and Tanganga has made himself a first team player. We have Parrott and Cirkin establishing themselves as high potential prospects. Give them some time.
For Chelsea, given they had about 200 players on loan and paid gazillions to poach a bunch of kids, getting some decent players in after they caught out for being cheating chavs is hardly a surprise
I'd say the issue is more our scouting than anything. Eg gilmour to Chelsea at 15 and on game vs pool looked class. But maybe that's just a volume game we are not playing and for every gilmour there are 10 who are shit.. But does anecdotally feel like wed have been better just playing a bit of football manager and seeing who was good rather than rely on our current scouts.. At least since dele (who was hardly under the radar)
I'd say the issue is more our scouting than anything. Eg gilmour to Chelsea at 15 and on game vs pool looked class. But maybe that's just a volume game we are not playing and for every gilmour there are 10 who are shit.. But does anecdotally feel like wed have been better just playing a bit of football manager and seeing who was good rather than rely on our current scouts.. At least since dele (who was hardly under the radar)
The academy seems to exist to create lots of average mid-table players that can then be sold for a profit.
If Parrot is not ready there should be a striker playing for the under 23 team that whilst maybe not good enough to compete with Kane but can play a part when we are desperate as we are. It is not the sole reason for our problems but is part of it as is poor scouting or decision making on transfers by Poch. Winks and Skipp have been a part of the first team squad for some time.
That's pretty much every academy. Not unlike most mining operations, the vast majority of what you dig up is shit. The bulk of what little comes out with value has little, mostly industrial grade, value. A bit of what you bring up is quality and can fetch good money. Occasionally you get lucky and find something of significant quality.
It's absolutely a numbers game.
I mean... That's sort of the point.
I saw on netflix that barca look at 8,000 kids a year for 50 places.