Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I agree that the danger with our new policy is that we will be replacing one group of players who had been here for years that were going nowhere with us in their early twenties, with another group of the same age who we'd picked up from other clubs who were doing the same.

That said, signing twenty year olds who've been released as twenty year olds by Premier League teams is not quite the same thing as ones of that age who were deemed not good enough for us because the higher standard involved means that it would certainly be possible for a Premier League "reject" at nineteen or twenty to become a regular in a Championship side a year or two later.

As for younger players at the club, I think it's really hard under the current structure to see how they could break into the first team even if they were playing superbly every week. For me, the current Development team set up just hasn't worked (I mean nationally, not just at City) and, based on some of his comments, Neil Warnock feels the same way. While it is possible for senior players with league experience to use Under 23 games to either prove their fitness after injury or work their way back into contention with some good performances, the widespread perception that the matches are too unlike what they are likely to face in first team football can lead to a situation whereby a lad of say, 17, who was playing really well for the Under 23s every week would probably still not be able to get into first team consideration because it would be felt that what are the closest thing we have now to the old style reserve team games do not ask the right questions of him.

Yes, it's good to see Tom James (who I always thought was good enough to get by in quite easily in League Two) nailing down a place in the Yeovil team - the Man United game should represent a great opportunity for all of the young Yeovil players.
I don't want to tar Warnock with the same brush as Slade but isn't he a part of the issue here, just as Malky was before? Our Academy is producing a certain kind of footballer but our first team is looking for something else altogether. You said Veale, Waite and Spence are 'nice' footballers but I'm sure Warnock would see that as damning them with faint praise. If that's right that Ralls dropped out late from Saturday's game, wouldn't it have been logical to put Veale in there rather than Paterson? If he was going to move Paterson there then Abbruzzese or Coxe could have covered at full back but he brought Bennett in, even though the plan was to give him a game off. If he doesn't trust these guys at home against a League 2 side in the middle of an injury/illness crisis then the writing is very much on the wall for them.

I agree that the DVP system is failing overall. The plan was probably to encourage an increase in technically gifted footballers, youngsters could continue to hone their skills for longer in an environment where it was encouraged above anything else. As you say, the problem is that it's not asking the right questions of the youngsters a lot of the time. We can carry on producing overlapping full backs, footballing centre halves & 'nice' central midfielders for as long as we want but I can't see Warnock being interested. With the emphasis more and more being on either surviving in the Premiership or grinding out results in the Championship, I doubt he's the only one.

As I said, I think there has been a lack of real talent coming through here in the last few years which doesn't help. There hasn't been another Ramsey so it's impossible to say whether he'd make it here now or not. From what I've seen of Matondo, I think Warnock might have wanted to fast-track him but we'll never know now.