Quote Originally Posted by Maurice Swan View Post
Been saying this for ages.....as one who is old enough to remember when we DID play them 16-17-18 years of age.
It's not even that long ago that we played youngsters. Aaron Ramsey is the obvious one who played at 16/17, but Cameron Jerome was our starting striker at what, 18? Joe Ledley broke through at 17, so did Chris Gunter and Adam Matthews, James Collins and Darcy Blake broke in as 18 year olds. Even under Mackay younger players like Ben Nugent and Declan John got opportunities. It seems in recent years we've employed "pragmatic" managers with little to no interest in developing players which ends with us loading up on crap journeymen we can't shift

What's baffling is that it's not like our age group sides are uniquely crap, they're actually generally decent and we've seen players poached by big clubs. Swansea, a side who we've generally gotten the better of in age group levels over recent years, played a 17 year old at Boro recently and he did well. I find it hard to believe that he's far better than every 17 year old at Cardiff