The Bluebirds Academy and DVP thread...

[Loramski]

One more point to add. Potential is potential and isn't really malleable. But I believe you need to put in your 10000 hours before you give that potential a chance. I think this is part of TOBW's point. Players need experience and opportunity.

Which players though? We're one point clear in second place, are you saying Warnock should have weakened the team at some point by playing youngsters he didn't think were good enough just because it would've been a nice thing to do? It's not realistic. Even two of the youngsters who eventually did force their way in here, Rhys Healey and Kadeem Harris, have been deemed surplus to requirements for the run-in. If there are better players than those two in the DVP side at present then I haven't seen them, even League 2 sides didn't take any of them on loan in January.

I'm all for bringing youngsters through but they've got to be of a standard. Just playing them won't make them world beaters. Ben Nugent, Aaron Wildig and Declan John all got a chance here but it still didn't work out for them. We sent players like Tommy O'Sullivan and Jazzi Barnum-Bobb out on loan to league clubs, where did that opportunity and experience get them?

Warnock (as with Slade before him) doesn't play the kind of football that will encourage the youngsters we're bringing through but until there's some genuine quality there it's hard to be critical of him for not playing them, even though I'd love to agree with you and TOBW on this.

[the other bob wilson]

Which players though? We're one point clear in second place, are you saying Warnock should have weakened the team at some point by playing youngsters he didn't think were good enough just because it would've been a nice thing to do? It's not realistic. Even two of the youngsters who eventually did force their way in here, Rhys Healey and Kadeem Harris, have been deemed surplus to requirements for the run-in. If there are better players than those two in the DVP side at present then I haven't seen them, even League 2 sides didn't take any of them on loan in January.

I'm all for bringing youngsters through but they've got to be of a standard. Just playing them won't make them world beaters. Ben Nugent, Aaron Wildig and Declan John all got a chance here but it still didn't work out for them. We sent players like Tommy O'Sullivan and Jazzi Barnum-Bobb out on loan to league clubs, where did that opportunity and experience get them?

Warnock (as with Slade before him) doesn't play the kind of football that will encourage the youngsters we're bringing through but until there's some genuine quality there it's hard to be critical of him for not playing them, even though I'd love to agree with you and TOBW on this.

I accept that it's tougher for Academy players to break into first teams at most clubs these days - certainly at higher levels, the need to avoid relegation at all costs makes it much more tempting to spend a few more tens of millions in the transfer market or on new managerial appointments if things are going wrong rather than "gamble" on youngsters.

Nevertheless, Cardiff City come across as a club less willing to turn to youth than others these days. Neil Warnock only needs to point to the league table to offer proof that his methods are working, but the only things that have really changed during his spell here when it comes to football below first team level are the selection policy and style of play when it comes to the Development side and, to a lesser extent, the Under 18s - Cardiff had been failing to produce local youngsters who would break into the first team long before he arrived.

Warnock believes in giving honest answers to most of the questions he is asked and he has been quite open about his motivation for being here - he wants that eighth promotion and is now saying that he would like another crack at the Premier League if we go up. In other words, his motives are purely selfish - I'd say he is only stating it as it is there in a way which most managers would do if they were as honest as he is. Dave Jones used to talk about how he wanted to "build" a club in all of his managerial jobs, by contrast, Neil Warnock says, with some justification, that building for the future is not an option at his age - he is much more about the here and now and this has to impact on how youth development is addressed under his management.

At the end of last season, Wales Under 20s played in the prestigious Toulon tournament and, although they didn't qualify from their group, they performed creditably with a win and draws against hosts France and eventual finalists the Ivory Coast. I watched all of Wales' games and, despite there being some much bigger names involved, the player who, arguably, received the most praise from the watching commentators and pundits was right back Cameron Coxe.

Cardiff City provided both full backs for the Welsh team with Rhys Abbruzzese doing well on the left, but it was Coxe, performing very much as a modern full back looking to get forward at every opportunity, who impressed most. For a while it looked as if Neil Warnock had been very impressed with Coxe as he started in the very first pre season friendly at Taffs Well and then made a competitive debut in the League Cup tie with Burton where, in a poor team performance, he did okay - certainly better than some of the bigger names who were offered the chance of making a genuine claim for first team selection.

A year ago this weekend, sixteen year old midfield player Sion Spence was, we were told, denied a place on the bench for the first team's final match of their campaign at Huddersfield by what was called an insurance matter.

Since then, Spence has played a full season at Under 18 level in an attacking midfield, number ten type role and has scored almost thirty goals, yet he seems further away from the first team at 17 than he did at 16.

I don't know how players such as Coxe, Spence and others youngsters who may have figured that they might get chancesLately in the first team if they really performed well in the early stages of 17/18 must have felt when they heard our manager announcing with the first month of the campaign barely completed that he didn't think this was a season for introducing young players.

The obvious question this raises is what will be a good season to introduce them? Lately, it seems no season is deemed suitable for giving youth a proper chance at Cardiff - bizarrely, the last time I can recall City taking a punt and giving a local youngster a league debut before it happened for Mark Harris last season was five years ago when Declan John started in our first top flight match in over fifty years at West Ham!

To return to Spence, at most clubs, his goalscoring achievements over the past nine months would have been rewarded with a regular place in the next step of the Development ladder - the Under 23 team. However, Cardiff are not like most clubs this season because their Under 18 and Under 23 teams would appear to be two separate entities with nothing linking them whatsoever. How else can you explain why it is that the only Academy players you have tended to see in the Development side this season have been ones who did not appear to be members of what was considered the strongest Under 18 team? Spence and others were playing every Saturday morning for Craig Bellamy's side while the "reward" for those who couldn't get into the starting eleven was a place on the bench on Monday for the Development team.

Rightly or wrongly, the impression was given that Bellamy would rather the youngsters stayed with him than go off playing for the closest thing City have these days to a reserve side and, if that were true, then it was a viewpoint which gained credence as the season went on and Development team games became more of exercise in futility for the young, locally produced, pros who were too old to feature for the Academy side.

So, someone like Cameron Coxe watched on while right backs Lee Peltier and Jazz Richards missed significant portions of the season through injury, while Bruno Manga was converted, with mixed results, to a right back and while Matt Connolly and even Greg Halford filled in there at various times knowing that his chances of being given a chance to prove himself among the seniors was virtually zero.

Instead, he spent his season turning out for a team where he probably didn't know a third to a half of his team mates because they had been recruited as almost one offs on a trial basis. Not just that, he and Abbruzzese were sometimes played out of position to accommodate full backs who played their one game on trial and then disappeared off the Cardiff City radar. Not all of the trialists were a waste of time as Ciaron Brown, among others, earned a contract and impressed for a while as a possible first team contender in the making, but, by the end of the season, his game was showing signs of decline as he seemed to be being dragged down by the mediocrity and random nature of what was going on around him.

How on earth has someone like Cameron Coxe's game "developed" after the season he's just been through with what is laughingly called our Development team? No doubt, unless he does something that City's Welsh youngsters have largely stopped doing during this decade, Coxe will be released and deemed to be another one who was not good enough by people who barely saw him play during his time with us - that's what I mean when I say it's lazy to just label a young player as not good enough, they each have their own story to tell and, in the case of the better ones, they might be justified in being bitter about the way they were treated by City.

Certainly, I would say that Coxe has good reason to wonder how his chances of "making it" have been helped by the way the Under 23 team has been used this season - has he, and some others, been given a fair crack of the whip? I don't think they have.

As I've said earlier in this thread, there are two possibilities here. Either Cardiff City have become a club where excuses are found to not consider young players for the team or those who say that our youngsters are not good enough are correct. Either way, I believe those who have been involved at the top level of our Academy over the past eight or nine seasons should be embarrassed that Swansea are now celebrating their ninth consecutive Welsh Youth Cup win - for a club that has relied on a steady stream of young Welsh players to maintain it's position as a "natural" first or second tier club for about ninety per cent of it's league existence, it's a disgrace to see us so clearly the poor relations in terms of youth football in our rivalry with Swansea.

[Blue in the Face]

Which players though? We're one point clear in second place, are you saying Warnock should have weakened the team at some point by playing youngsters he didn't think were good enough just because it would've been a nice thing to do? It's not realistic. Even two of the youngsters who eventually did force their way in here, Rhys Healey and Kadeem Harris, have been deemed surplus to requirements for the run-in. If there are better players than those two in the DVP side at present then I haven't seen them, even League 2 sides didn't take any of them on loan in January.

I'm all for bringing youngsters through but they've got to be of a standard. Just playing them won't make them world beaters. Ben Nugent, Aaron Wildig and Declan John all got a chance here but it still didn't work out for them. We sent players like Tommy O'Sullivan and Jazzi Barnum-Bobb out on loan to league clubs, where did that opportunity and experience get them?

Warnock (as with Slade before him) doesn't play the kind of football that will encourage the youngsters we're bringing through but until there's some genuine quality there it's hard to be critical of him for not playing them, even though I'd love to agree with you and TOBW on this.

Good points Loramski. Will answer later when I have time.