Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
My sources (who are usually completely wrong in these matters) tell me Rabbi Matondo will be leading the Man City attack this afternoon. Aaron Wildig has been playing league football all through this decade (albeit for lowly League Two sides much of the time) and with a full international cap, captaining Bristol Rovers and playing 200 times for them at the age of twenty three, Tom Lockyer is putting together a CV which will have him featuring on the radar of Championship clubs.

It's too easy and a bit simplistic to put the lack of youngsters breaking into our first team squad down solely to the fact they aren't good enough. In my opinion, it's far, far harder for a teenager to break into their club's first team at this level these days, because the default action of managers when they are on the lookout to plug a hole in their first team squad is to spend money, often millions of pounds, on a ready made replacement rather than look at what they have already got.

For example, our manager seems to be interested in bringing in a striker who according to reports I've read, will cost us Ł4 million - this is despite accusations I've seen about him in the past accusing him of having a dodgy attitude and a questionable work rate. Meanwhile, there is a player already at Cardiff who is on course to score twenty times plus this season - Sion Spence must have scored fifteen times now for our Academy team this season and I maintain that at various times during my time supporting the club when we have been in the second tier that would have earned him a first team chance.

Spence scored again yesterday as the Under 18s won 2-1 at Bristol City (Connor Davies got the other one) to record their fourth consecutive victory since they started playing again following the Christmas break and a couple of goals by Knott helped the Under 16s to a win over the same opposition by the same score after they had trailed at half time.


Finally, good to see Ashley Baker being involved with the first team at Sheffield Wednesday - I was surprised when we let him go.
I agree with the sentiment entirely but the point I was making (I think) was that none of the players we've released recently are playing at a higher level than we're at now and until that happens we can hardly criticise the club for not playing them here and then releasing them. I didn't want to go back as far as Lockyer, Wildig, Wes Burns etc but they back up my argument, for now at least. We released Lockyer seven years ago and he's still a League One player, so is Oshilaja and so is Ajayi. All might make it but how long do we hold on to these type of players in case they make it in the Championship eventually? Do we keep giving them new contracts and hope someone takes them on loan till they're 25 or older?

You can say that if we play them then that will help them become better players but we played Nugent, Wildig and Declan John and it still didn't work out for them here. Sending them out on loan helped Healey, Ralls and Harris but not O'Sullivan, Tutonda and Barnum-Bobb. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to bring all youngsters on, each individual is different. Until an Oshilaja or a Lockyer start playing at a higher level than us then it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the problem is more down to a lack of talent being recruited rather than what we're doing with them while they're here, although I'm certainly not pretending we've been blameless when it comes to that.

Good to see Ashley Baker doing well, I agree.

You need new sources, by the way.