Quote Originally Posted by Loramski View Post
What do you make of this new policy of signing 19/20-year-olds for the under-23 squad? I said on here last week that I didn't believe the Obi story. If he was that good then why didn't we sign him when he was here on trial and why has no one else picked him up in the meantime? I must be missing something. It feels a bit like when we were in the lower divisions, picking up other teams' rejects, but when we're 3rd in the Championship and pushing for the Prem it seems a long shot to think we'll find suitable players this way. As Wales-Bales said last week 'why would Watford release a star?'

Brown seems to be a late developer so we can squeeze him into the category of picking up youngsters from smaller clubs that seems a better idea to me (Ralls, Healey and Kadeem Harris have turned out ok for us, whereas 'rejects' Kennedy and Ajayi haven't) but surely the chances of finding a 20-year-old Premiership quality player on the scrapheap can't be great? Obviously Warnock feels he can get something out of players that other managers can't, and we've seen some evidence of that, but it still seems an odd policy for a club in our position.
I've always promoted the idea of giving youth a chance on here and I still think Russell Slade is the worst Cardiff City manager I've seen when it comes to youth development. However, he is just one of a trio of our most recent managers who have, rightly or wrongly, believed that our Academy is not doing a good enough job when it comes to developing young players and the fact of the matter is that it is a long time since I've seen a player in our Under 18 side who I've thought could go straight into the first team and not let anyone down.

Contrast that to the noughties when I'd see at least one player a season - my hunches weren't always right, but I honestly wasn't surprised to see Jerome, Ledley, Blake, Gunter and Ramsey do well when given a chance.

Of the current crop, I like the full backs Coxe and Abbruzzese and the midfielders Veale, Waite and Spence are all nice footballers, Mark Harris shows flashes of quality and Isaak Davies looks like he may be the very rare animal a good quality home produced striker, but I'd only say Coxe might be able to step into the first team and do well and he's too old for the Under 19s now.

With so few nineteen and twenty year olds who have come up through the ranks here pushing for a place, it's not really surprising that we are looking elsewhere - Brown seems a worthwhile punt to me, but, like you, I'm not wholly convinced by Obi and the way his career has developed makes it obvious that, for whatever reason, he has not lived up to all the hype of four or five years ago. However, I have to ask, where is the youth product striker who is going to do better than Obi for us? Davies is too young and I'm not sure Harris will ever be a regular goalscorer, even if he makes a decent career for himself in the game.

Incidentally, I learned yesterday that Tommy O'Sullivan, the player who more than anyone else exemplifies the failure of the Academy in recent years, has joined bottom of the Conference Torquay on loan after failing to break into the team at Colchester. O'Sullivan was definitely talented and I wonder how he would have turned out if he had come up through the Academy at a club like Forest - they may be lower in the league than us, but I was definitely jealous of them when I heard they had five Academy products in the side that beat Arsenal.