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Good interview here on the BBC site with Jared Bowen.
Turns out he was on trial at Cardiff for six weeks but got rejected. Club must regret that one!
Does make you wonder how many youngsters come through the door for trials, must be a real skill to pick out the ones who will develop at that age
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/a...s/cdd3v0zzdrro
Enjoyed that. Thanks for putting it up.Originally Posted by DannyP_93
It feels like a kick in the balls knowing we had the chance to have him here.
When you think of some of the dross that’s put a City shirt on over the yrs, it’s seems crazy we let hip slip through our hands.
Saying that, there must be thousands of players who’ve failed to make the grade after looking promising as youngsters.Luck and mental attitude play a big part as well as natural talent.
If he was signed by us. As he's from Hereford, there maybe a Welsh connection... Thus would be a Welsh player now as England wouldn't have picked him up. Strange how things turn up
I knew of Bowen being rejected by City, but thought he was younger than that when it happened - the gap between him being told he wasn't good eniough for us and him starting to get first team games at Hull is not that great and makes you wonder even m ore about youth development with City.
Of course, the Academy is being praised a lot now and rightly so, becauass it looks like we have a good crop that have come through and appear to be handling the tansition from youth and under 21 football into the first team well - no doubt, the fact that there are a few of their team mates for ten years and more doing the same thing makes it a little easier.
It shouldn't be forgotten though that for a decade and more, the Academy produced players who might get to play in the early rounds of the League Cup every season, but that would be an end to their first team experience. I'll never believe it was a case of us not producing any players good enough to play at Championship level or higher - the Jared Bowen rejection suggests we weren't good enough at analysing or recognising talent for about a dozen years.
I said the same on Twitter in response to a Paul Abbo post - it feels like, on the rare occasions in recent years when a young player was selected for the first team, they have been quite quickly discarded, and I always wondered how they were ALL deemed not good enough (I assumed that those making such decisions clearly knew much more than me and saw more of the player than we ever would)
And now we see lots of young players getting a chance and seemingly flourishing (who knows if it will last) - so assuming that this continues, what was behind the past conservatism and caution of playing youngsters?
It has always been puzzling and frustrating as a supporter to see so few players come through, which makes the current situation so much more refreshing.
Where did those players end up?
This is no surprise to me, I know of one player who came through the system and ended up playing for Wales in the not too distant past who was the least talented of the youngsters at the time and yet was given a lucky break. Other far more talented youngsters were rejected at the time and were never given the chance to show their full potential. I remember some of the first team players at the time being amazed that he was chosen over some of the others. A terrible waste of talent.
I'm not very good at these guessing games.
Who is the player exactly... Darcy Blake?
It would not be fair on him to say as he made a decent career for himself, but he was nowhere near the best youngster at the club at the time. This was around the early 2000's. No not Darcy.
Talent is just a part of it. Got to have the mentality and the discipline too. Mark Pembridge wasn’t as naturally talented as Jason Bowen or another local lad called Julian Barsi, who was with Luton as a youngster, but he worked 10 times harder than them and had a stellar career.
South Wales is full of should haves and could haves, not just football but rugby too. There’s still
people in Merthyr who say Pembridge isn’t better than Julian Barsi even though he’s played for the clubs he has and has over 50 Welsh caps.. Julian only ever played Welsh league.
When Julian was down town as a 16 year old on a Friday night Pembridge was up the hockey (a local pitch) working on his game with his old man.
James Collins I assume you mean. Around his age in the early 2000s LS was the one tipped for big things and was seen as the better centre half of two and most likely to make it into the first team, but he unfortunately didn’t have the discipline or mentality of Collins.
I heard an interview with Gary Neville where he said he'd hear loads of players who were good up to a certain age saying that they were good enough, they just didn't have the discipline and he'd say well then you weren't good enough then. The ability to play is only part of it
Yeah, I’ve seen him on the overlap saying him and his brother were not the most talented but they had discipline and the mentality to keep working hard ever single day. Contrast that to someone like Ravel Morrison who had all the ability in the world but, in Sam Allardyce (his manager at West Han) words, he didn’t have the mental capacity to be a professional footballer. Same as Leon Jeanne really.
If we are discussing players who’ve made the most of their careers by matching limited ability with hard work, discipline and mental strength, then we can add one of our former players, Josh McGennis.
Started his footballing days as a keeper, before becoming a striker.
A career spanning 25 yrs, playing for at least 10 clubs, and getting over 80 caps for Northern Ireland, and scoring 12 goals for them.
He still going, and scored today for Exeter City.
Confirmed ineligible for Wales years ago.
I asked Buzby where those players ended up. I’m not surprised he swerved the question.
The fact is that, during the past ten years, none of the players who graduated from the club’s youth system, made first team appearances and were subsequently discarded have gone on to bigger and better things.
Players who fall into that category include Xavier Benjamin (now at Enfield), Sam Bowen (now at Solihull Moors), Cameron Coxe (now at Boreham Wood), Tom Davies (now at Newport County), Kieron Evans (now at Eastleigh), Jai Semenyo (also at Eastleigh) and Chanka Zimba (now at Inverness Caledonian Thistle).
The one that stands out for me is Ollie Denham. He made his debut in a League Cup game against Brighton and started in a FA Cup tie against Liverpool at Anfield before playing five Championship games for City during the second half of the 2021/22 campaign. Fans were talking in serious terms about him being a genuine Premier League prospect. He’s now playing for Sligo Rovers in the League of Ireland.
The only realistic conclusion you can draw from the above is that those players were simply not good enough for Championship or even League One football, and the club was right to release them when it did.
The young players who have made it through to the first team in recent years and looked genuinely capable of playing at Championship or League One level have all been retained (Cian Ashford, Joel Bagan, Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies and Eli King), and now we have another very promising batch of academy products emerging to play alongside them.
It’s really exciting stuff, but it’s not as if the emergence of the younger players in the current squad is a sudden development. After all, Bagan made his first team debut in February 2020, Colwill made his in February 2021, Davies and King made theirs in October 2021, and Ashford made his in August 2023.
It was more a case of the 1st team manager not being prepared to sacrifice experience for youth.
Players need to play regularly at the level that they’re required for to develop and even better if in a winning team.
Bowen didn’t leave us and immediately become a much better player
Bowen was only ever here on trial.
Here’s a question about managerial attitudes towards young players. I’ve seen Dylan Lawlor described as a “generational talent” and a Champions League player in the making, but do you think he would be a regular starter in a Neil Warnock managed City team?
Not a chance, but here’s another question: if City were still in the Championship, do you think Lawlor would be a regular starter at this stage of his career?
Under this manager yes, under Warnock, no way. However, Warnock would have to be a strong contender for a best second tier manager of the last 50 years award. I’d also say that whereas it’s fear of the sack which makes many not pick kids, with Warnock it was a matter of principle. He never feared the sack, in fact he tended to clear off as soon as he sensed things were beginning to turn against him.
I’m not so sure he would be a regular starter in the Championship even under BBM. I reckon the manager has a fair bit more leeway with the youngsters at this level than he would if we were the level above.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to our line-up in the coming weeks now that Osho is in the squad. He won’t have come here to sit on the bench.
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