"Cardiff City take Leeds United’s McKay twins on trial as attempts to improve under-23s setup continue..."
http://www.insidewalessport.co.uk/ca...e-mckay-twins/
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"Cardiff City take Leeds United’s McKay twins on trial as attempts to improve under-23s setup continue..."
http://www.insidewalessport.co.uk/ca...e-mckay-twins/
Development side drew 3 - 3 with Charlton this afternoon. No other details at the moment sorry.
Or if you want to believe this (later but wrong) report Charlton won 3 - 2 (they didn't).Originally Posted by emjayblue
http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/12/18...react-to-warn/
Even more startling - Leeds fans rubbish the trialist McKay brothers!
Came back from 3-1 down. Mark Harris scored one and James Waite scored two. Spence started.
Great to hear. Not sure what their current crop is like but Charlton have been excellent at this level in recent years so that's a terrific effort.
Didn't think this article would garner much interest in it's own thread, but there's an interesting quote from Neil which relates to our DVP. Possibly we are about to see a big jump in standard if some of the incoming players are understudies, at the Healy level of development say...
“I’ve spoken to the owners and I feel we’re going to sign five or six players between 20 and 23 who are capable of stepping up into the squad.
We’ll give them the opportunity to play with the 23s, train with us and supplement our squad. We want better quality from the squad.
We are looking at trying to steady the club because it’s fair to say that when I came, I was criticised for letting some players go, but I don’t see any of them going on to get into better clubs.”
http://www.insidewalessport.co.uk/wa...x-new-players/
The infrequent Inside Wales Sport articles tend to be worth a read.
Oh, plus these Duffus / Healy related quotes from Neil. No surprise that he doesn't sound like he rates the DVP system...
“I’ve had four clubs after Rhys already but I don’t think he’s in a rush and we have to look after ourselves in the second-half of the season and we’ll have to think twice about loaning him.
Tyrone (Dufus) has been playing with Hereford and I like him but its great for him to play in a man’s league and it’s a good club to get some games.
We’re having more training games now with me refereeing and I think that’s better than the ‘charity match’ like the under-23s is"
He's always been critical of DVP games, has rightly called for the old reserves sides to return on the grounds your youngsters are then playing with more experienced players, first teamers returning from injury etc.
Good article. Makes sense - saw those in the DVP weren't capable of pushing on for first team here, replace with some from other clubs with a better chance of progressing to fil the gap in the meantime.
In the pre Bolton press conference on IFollow, Neil Warnock talked about us being likely to sign four players for the Under 23 squad, two of which were from the Championship, one was from non league and another was from somewhere else I think it was he said - that could be the McKay brothers from Leeds, Ciaron Brown from Wealdstone and Mikey Devlin from Hamilton Academicals
http://www.teamtalk.com/news/exclusi...eague-defender
http://www.insidewalessport.co.uk/ca...ichael-devlin/
The Under 23s are at home to Millwall today, kick off 12 o clock at Leckwith.
The Under 18s won their first game after Christmas 4-1 at Colchester on Saturday with Trystan Jones, Sam Bowen, Adam Sharif and Sion Spence scoring.
Any idea who the trialists are today ? One starting 2 on the bench.
Cardiff City DVP @CardiffCityDVP
TEAM NEWS - @CardiffCityFC U23/DVP: Camp, Coxe, Abbruzzese, Waite, Brown, Trialist (6), Feeney, M. Harris, Bogle, Pilkington, Young.
Subs: Trialist (12), Ratcliffe, Obi, Trialist (15).#CityAsOne 🔵⚽️🔵⚽️
11:34 AM - Jan 8, 2018
They are called 6, 12 and 15. Given the number of trialists the club has given games to in the u23s in recent months I'm surprised we aren't playing Nos 36, 51 and 79!
The trialists are the two McKays from Leeds who've played previously and a lad called Jacob Evans from Farnborough.
Just gone one up with a composed finish from Pilkington but conceded an equaliser immediately after a Lee Camp cock up.
City battered Millwall 1-1 at Leckwith today - the last half an hour was one way traffic towards the visitor's goal and there were so many chances for that winning goal. Luck was certainly against us and there was some desperate last ditch blocks by Millwall defenders, but there were also a series of bad misses from City players and they could have ended up losing if Millwall's centre forward hadn't volleyed over from eight yards in the closing minutes.
My report on yesterday's game.
http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
Also, Wealdstone have confirmed that Ciaran Brown has signed for us - we'll be playing his old club in a pre season game next summer.
http://www.thenationalleague.org.uk/...iff-city-44768
What do you make of this new policy of signing 19/20-year-olds for the under-23 squad? I said on here last week that I didn't believe the Obi story. If he was that good then why didn't we sign him when he was here on trial and why has no one else picked him up in the meantime? I must be missing something. It feels a bit like when we were in the lower divisions, picking up other teams' rejects, but when we're 3rd in the Championship and pushing for the Prem it seems a long shot to think we'll find suitable players this way. As Wales-Bales said last week 'why would Watford release a star?'
Brown seems to be a late developer so we can squeeze him into the category of picking up youngsters from smaller clubs that seems a better idea to me (Ralls, Healey and Kadeem Harris have turned out ok for us, whereas 'rejects' Kennedy and Ajayi haven't) but surely the chances of finding a 20-year-old Premiership quality player on the scrapheap can't be great? Obviously Warnock feels he can get something out of players that other managers can't, and we've seen some evidence of that, but it still seems an odd policy for a club in our position.
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.
I agree that the danger with our new policy is that we will be replacing one group of players who had been here for years that were going nowhere with us in their early twenties, with another group of the same age who we'd picked up from other clubs who were doing the same.
That said, signing twenty year olds who've been released as twenty year olds by Premier League teams is not quite the same thing as ones of that age who were deemed not good enough for us because the higher standard involved means that it would certainly be possible for a Premier League "reject" at nineteen or twenty to become a regular in a Championship side a year or two later.
As for younger players at the club, I think it's really hard under the current structure to see how they could break into the first team even if they were playing superbly every week. For me, the current Development team set up just hasn't worked (I mean nationally, not just at City) and, based on some of his comments, Neil Warnock feels the same way. While it is possible for senior players with league experience to use Under 23 games to either prove their fitness after injury or work their way back into contention with some good performances, the widespread perception that the matches are too unlike what they are likely to face in first team football can lead to a situation whereby a lad of say, 17, who was playing really well for the Under 23s every week would probably still not be able to get into first team consideration because it would be felt that what are the closest thing we have now to the old style reserve team games do not ask the right questions of him.
Yes, it's good to see Tom James (who I always thought was good enough to get by in quite easily in League Two) nailing down a place in the Yeovil team - the Man United game should represent a great opportunity for all of the young Yeovil players.
Funny reading this as these were my thoughts exactly. Harris is a funny one. He does show flashes of tremendous quality, but he also has the tendency to drift out of games. I'm not sure what a coach should be saying to him? Hunt for the ball more?
Always like the look of Coxe's boldness and he seems to have a big influence from positions which aren't typically influential. Think Coxe can make it to league one level at least.
I haven't seen enough from highlight reels, but Bowen seems to take a very cultured set piece also.
My attitude with Coxe is that, if we aren't going to use him at this stage, then let him go out on loan somewhere.
Bowen is another good footballer, but I don't think of him in terms of the first team yet because he's still only fifteen or sixteen I believe.
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