Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I've always promoted the idea of giving youth a chance on here and I still think Russell Slade is the worst Cardiff City manager I've seen when it comes to youth development. However, he is just one of a trio of our most recent managers who have, rightly or wrongly, believed that our Academy is not doing a good enough job when it comes to developing young players and the fact of the matter is that it is a long time since I've seen a player in our Under 18 side who I've thought could go straight into the first team and not let anyone down.

Contrast that to the noughties when I'd see at least one player a season - my hunches weren't always right, but I honestly wasn't surprised to see Jerome, Ledley, Blake, Gunter and Ramsey do well when given a chance.

Of the current crop, I like the full backs Coxe and Abbruzzese and the midfielders Veale, Waite and Spence are all nice footballers, Mark Harris shows flashes of quality and Isaak Davies looks like he may be the very rare animal a good quality home produced striker, but I'd only say Coxe might be able to step into the first team and do well and he's too old for the Under 19s now.

With so few nineteen and twenty year olds who have come up through the ranks here pushing for a place, it's not really surprising that we are looking elsewhere - Brown seems a worthwhile punt to me, but, like you, I'm not wholly convinced by Obi and the way his career has developed makes it obvious that, for whatever reason, he has not lived up to all the hype of four or five years ago. However, I have to ask, where is the youth product striker who is going to do better than Obi for us? Davies is too young and I'm not sure Harris will ever be a regular goalscorer, even if he makes a decent career for himself in the game.

Incidentally, I learned yesterday that Tommy O'Sullivan, the player who more than anyone else exemplifies the failure of the Academy in recent years, has joined bottom of the Conference Torquay on loan after failing to break into the team at Colchester. O'Sullivan was definitely talented and I wonder how he would have turned out if he had come up through the Academy at a club like Forest - they may be lower in the league than us, but I was definitely jealous of them when I heard they had five Academy products in the side that beat Arsenal.
And the fact that Warnock wasn't even prepared to risk one against Mansfield speaks volumes, especially considering how short we were on numbers. The big question is, how much of the problem is the shortage of talent we're bringing into the Academy and how much is how we're developing them once they're here? Personally I believe it's much more to do with the former. I'm certainly not claiming we've helped players like O'Sullivan but it's hard to believe he'd be a regular at Championship level if we'd treated him differently. We seem to be looking for a quicker rotation of players now to stop players like him and Wharton treading water here for years which is a good thing but I'm not sure of the logic of replacing 20-year-olds who aren't good enough for us with 20-year-olds who aren't good enough for other teams.

Of course we should be on the lookout for talent that's slipped the net but we've always done that (and I'm sure all clubs do) without making a big song and dance about it. I would've thought the emphasis should be put on bringing in 15-17 year olds with potential rather than relying on players who've already failed elsewhere. It's too small a sample to generalise from but, as I said before, Ralls, Healey and Harris have worked out better for us than Ajayi, Kennedy and Barnum-Bobb in recent years. I'm wary of criticising Warnock though, hopefully he'll pull a rabbit or two out of the hat for us.

You mentioning O'Sullivan reminds me to say that Tom James is finally getting a run of starts at Yeovil, he seems to be playing at right back. A home tie with Man Utd in the cup coming up, good luck to him.