Quote Originally Posted by Loramski View Post
But, surely, your second reason explains the first one. Or are you saying we should be playing youngsters whether they're good enough or not and that will benefit both the club and the youngsters themselves? How's that policy been paying off at Glamorgan this season?

After all the upheaval at u-23 level it finally looks like its settling down. Hopefully they can start playing some decent football and the better ones can push on. For all the good results we used to have it didn't produce many first teamers, we'll have to wait and see if the shake-up (and keeping the talented Academy lads well away from it) will pay dividends in the long run.
This is a conversation that's been had plenty of times on here, but I still say that there is no encouragement whatsoever given to locally produced young players at the club once they reach an age when a decision is made about giving them professional contracts. The club hand out so many of these contracts, but there seems little point to it currently, because the youngsters concerned have next to no chance of playing for the first team and surely the whole point of making someone a full time professional is that they are considered realistic contenders to make it into the first team?

I don't accept the argument that just because we don't have first teamers who came up through the ranks that it automatically means we haven't had any who were good enough to make it at senior level for the club. If you play for a club that has not shown any faith in youth for years, then this is bound to have an influence on the way you approach your time there - in the end, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy because any lads from this area with a level of talent which gives them that reasonable chance of making a long career for themselves in the game will decide not to bother with Cardiff because they have no recent precedents of local youngsters "making it" at the club.

As for the current crop of Development team players, I did say a degree of continuity might result in some improvement and it would be unfair to write off players such as Ryan Price and Dan Martin because they've only just arrived here, but I'm not seeing anything from the trialists we gave contracts to over the course of 16/17 and last season to suggest they are an improvement on what we had.