by Snowflake Royal »
19 Aug 2022 16:56
3points Seems to me that we're increasingly signing players who have been released by other clubs - is this a statement that development through our academy isn't good enough perhaps? Other teams like Brentford and Huddersfield scrapped their academies completely and rely totally on signing other clubs' off-casts. I know a lot of that is dictated by geography as both those teams have lots of big club academies nearby who swallow up all the best talent.
I know Dai likes the academy structure and we're re-applying for Cat 1 status already. But if we had a new owner with less deep pockets then cutting the academy to a Brentford model could work given our proximity to all the London clubs and talent pool.
I think we're doing a mix of:
1) bringing kids through from a young age - see Obita, Holmes, McIntyre
2) searching for older rejected talent from top Academies who may have a clearer pathway to our first team at our level, see Olise, and
3) poaching quality older players from lower level Academies
Without the Academy we don’t have anywhere to put the second and third points to finish their development and transition them towards the first team.
We're also always going to have only a relatively small number make it through from the young age groups to be contenders for the first team because generally only a few ever make it anywhere, so we need to bolster numbers at the upper age groups to make up for the ones who don’t make it through the younger groups well enough to stay on.