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Because one of those four hardly played for us again, another one left a year later and another one was getting towards his mid thirties - with a different approach and a little foresight from City, he would, surely, have been happy to stay rather than go to Rotherham.Originally Posted by LeningradCowboy
Why? He'd already been at the club for two years and not played a single minute for us. Morrison, Bamba, and Ecuele Manga were clearly ahead of him in the pecking order, so he'd have been fourth choice at best.
I think this is the different approach TOBW is hinting at.
He had loans first at league 2 level, then league one, then at championship level
After leaving us he briefly dipped back to league 1 and then has done very well at championship level and now is a premier league player. Early in his career he had a reputation for looking commanding , but dropping the occasional clanger. But Rotherham persisted with him and with experience he's become quite the player.
I can't understand why he's made it to the premier league and none of the players we've loaned to Weston Super Mare have made it yet?
Can anyone help?
Fourth choice with a good chance of being second choice a year later - there was always a good chance that Bruno, who was thirty himself by then, would be moving on soon and Bamba was at an age where his performance levels could decline quickly. Truth is though, I was daft to mention "foresight" because City have proved over a period of years that they don't do foresight.
Hindsight is 20/20, unless you are claiming that was your opinion in March 2017 when Ajayi signed a contract with Rotherham?
Did I think Ajayi would be playing in the Premier League within three years? No I didn't. Did I think that he was someone who could do a job for us based on what I had seen of him in what I would guess would be around twenty appearances for our under 23s? Yes I did. All four of those centrebacks you mentioned were thirty plus or getting fairly close to that age and so it was clear that a degree of rebuilding would need to be carried out in that position.
Ajayi's subsequent career proves I was underestimating him when I thought of him as only a potential Championship player, but, more important than that, our manager at the time didn't rate him that highly - if he had done, there wouldn't have been any need to have spent all of those millions on Aden Flint.
Was Ajayi good enough at the time to play for us in the season that we got promoted? Let's be honest, he probably wasn't, so how would he have developed if he had stayed here? Not by playing for the under 23s.
Well, seeing that Ben Nugent came in as a teenager and didn't let anyone down in our previous promotion season, I'd say the answer to your question is, almost certainly, yes because Ajayi is clearly the better player of the two.
I agree. Also, Bruno went on to regularly playing right back for us and Connelly was forever injured.
So he could have been just behind Sol and Morrison.
I'm astounded that people defend the club's approach to young players, which has been appalling.
Even some of the youngsters who left us and not done great after they left, I wonder if they were damaged by our 'anti-youth development' approach ... overlooked, sidelined, ignored and at a club that has a football approach that is quite frankly 'prehistoric'.
As much as I love the club, I would really struggle allowing one of my children to sign for city at youth level knowing the clubs approach to development
This is what Bellamy was trying to change.
Agree with this 100%
Yes you can look at our squad at the time and think that Ajayi wouldn't be first choice ahead of Morrison and Bamba, but in that promotion season Greg Halford even played a few games at centre back so there would have been opportunities if only the club had the will to take them to develop youth.
There will ALWAYS be a more proven option but unless you push the boat out occasionally and play then them the younger players are never going to become good enough.
Ajayi got games at a decent level (thanks to Rotherham) and went on to be a good Championship level defender at least, and is just entering his peak years.
How many more of our youth players could have developed to a far higher level if they had been at a club that was remotely interested in developing youth players? we will never know.
One of the most baffling decisions with Ajayi came under Slade when we had nothing to play for and a run of 5 or 6 games at the end of the season, and we decided to play Danny Gabbidon instead, who was at the end of his contract .
To take another club as an example - Reading.
Players from their academy are currently playing for half of the teams in the Championship.
Are players from the Reading area much more naturally gifted than those from South Wales? - no of course not.
Were all of those players the strongest options at their clubs in their respective positions when they started to get game time? - no of course not.
They could have made excuses for not playing any of them, in exactly the same way as we see on this thread about Ajayi, but they, and other clubs at this level didn't.
Where has anyone defended the club's approach to young players? Why are we even talking about the Academy when Ajayi was 21 when he joined us and 23 when he left? When did Halford play centre half for us in the promotion season, outside of two League Cup games? How were we meant to stop Ajayi leaving for Rotherham so he'd even have been with us that season?
I've explained the Ajayi situation here twice. We set up three loan deals for him (which was three more than Arsenal did) the first two were cut short and the third was so successful he wanted to sign for them because they could offer him regular first team football whereas here he'd have had to get past two of Bamba, Morrison and Manga. He was 23, wanted to play first team football and his contract was nearly up, it was a no-brainer for him.
Ajayi wasn't good enough to make Rotherham's League One team after one and a half seasons of regular football at the age of 24 and yet apparently we should have moved heaven and earth to have kept him here for our promotion push and subsequent Premier League campaign even though there were three better centre halves ahead of him. I'm definitely missing something here.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with much of what you and African Bluebird say. Your comparison with Reading is interesting and I wouldn't have realised there were so many of their Academy products dotted around the Championship if you hadn't pointed it out. Your question about the area around that club being some sort of hotbed of football talent puts into perspective how much the attitude towards youth development at a club can set a marker.
I'd ask a question as a counterpoint to yours regarding Cardiff City and the South Wales area. Does the lack of success of the Cardiff City Academy in producing first team footballers from within their own ranks prove that the flow of footballing talent in the area has dried up in the last decade or so? My own view is no and what has changed is Cardiff City's attitude towards young players, but, say I'm wrong about that and there is no longer the stream of good footballers that Cardiff City took advantage of through the first ninety years of their Football League existence, the obvious question which arises is why? Can the local professional football team be considered blameless in such a situation?
I'm going to mention Semi Ajayi again here, not to resurrect the same argument about him, but to talk about City's attitude towards him after they signed him. Ajayi joined us at the age of around twenty one and a half after Arsenal decided not to renew his contract - they decided he wasn't good enough for them, but they had thought enough of him to have him as an unused sub in three Premier League matches.
According to Ajayi, Russell Slade told him he was considered to be a "project" when he signed for us. Twenty one and a half strikes me as old for a project, not ridiculously so though, but when he signed for Rotherham permanently, he was nearly twenty four and I'd say he had remained a project for the duration of his time with us - whether he is good enough to merit it or not, three years later he is playing in the Premier League after having been part of a promotion team last season.
As far as City are concerned, Ajayi was similar to Tommy O'Sullivan and Theo Wharton in being someone the club held on to until they were in the early to mid twenties before we released them - both of those players I've mentioned's subsequent careers suggest that City were right not to blood them in the first team on a regular basis when they were playing for us in cup ties, but, City seem to specialise in leaving good young players in something of a limbo once they reach the age of about nineteen - O'Sullivan and Wharton must have known they were getting nowhere here during the last two years of their time with us and the same seemed to happen with Sean Spence and is in real danger of happening with the gifted James Waite.
Young players and their parents must have noted this apparent log jam at Cardiff whereby youngsters are talked up through their teens and then appear to stagnate and this cannot be a good thing for the club's chances of future recruitment - if we are to persist with an Academy, there has to be some evidence from time to time that it is actually working.
Currently, the youth development situation at City invites a series of questions, for example;-
1, If there has been a serious decline in young talent from this area in recent years, should the club's Academy be closed down?
2. If the seam of quality players is still open and available, is the club's youth scouting scheme good enough to recognise them and the club's youth management system able to get them to commit to City?
3. if a good proportion of the best talent in south Wales is willing to commit to the club, why do we seem so poor at handling the transformation from promising teenager through to first team footballer?
Based on what has happened over the past decade to the Academy which produced so many really good players in the early years of its existenc, I would guess that there are definitely some parents out there now who would agree with AfricanBluebird when he says;-
"As much as I love the club, I would really struggle allowing one of my children to sign for city at youth level knowing the clubs approach to development."
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