In the thread for last weekend's Swansea v Bristol City, I mentioned that from what I'd seen of the game, one of the wurzels' best players was an eighteen year old midfielder from Newport who had been with us up to the age of thirteen - I posed the question would he have been playing up at Rotherham the day before if he was still with us? I think most of us know what the answer to that oneOriginally Posted by dembethewarrior
would be.
Bristol City finished above us last season and, almost certainly, they'll finish above this time as well, yet their side has a nucleus of young, Academy produced players, some of whom are still in their teens. They've not had spectacular success these last two seasons, but they've been pretty safe in lower mid table and they've benefited down the years through selling Academy produced players sometimes for eight figure sums.
Therefore, you'd compare their team with ours and conclude that, given the lack of first team talent produced by us down the years, Bristol must traditionally have better Academy teams than us. However, if you use the results between us and the wurzels at this level over the past twenty years as the yardstick, particularly at under 18 level, you'd have to conclude that we had the better Academy because we've had the better of meetings between the teams down the years.
Sludge mentions that we should be expected to have eight representatives in the current Wales under 17 squad, but, off the top of my head, I can't think of a Wales age group squad with better City representation than that in all of the time we've had an Academy - the fact that the under 17 squad is shaping up to be one of the best Welsh age group sides of recent times, should be great news for City given we have so many of our youngsters forming part of it.
However, the clear fact that the wurzels produce youngsters which not only get into their first team and prosper within it while barely ever having successful under 18 sides, in terms of results at least, is in stark contrast to us. Apart from the initial spurt when the Academy was first set up that produced Ledley, Gunter, Blake, Ramsey and Matthews, City have struggled to convert youthful promise into senior success and I'll always maintain that saying that our youngsters have not been good enough is being too simplistic about the situation.
About three or four years ago it looked like we had an Under 18 side which was going to produce plenty of first teamers for us and it was successful to the extent that more youngsters from that team were given a chance in the first team than any other of recent times, but look where we are now. Based on results, we've got the worst senior team we've had in twenty years and all of the locally produced youngsters who were getting fairly regular first team football last season are further away from the starting eleven now than they were a year ago.
The fact that we have been so hopeless at producing first team footballers from our Academy for over a decade now will surely not pass unnoticed among the youngsters at the club and their parents and representatives - who can blame Omar Taylor-Clarke (the Bristol City player I mentioned earlier) for opting for the wurzels over us when he's getting opportunities there which he, almost certainly, wouldn't have got here?
It's not as simple as saying if you're good enough, you're good enough.
d
