Mention of Joe Ledley takes me back to that match against Sheffield United in 2005 which was played the day after what became known as Black Friday when Kav left in a helicopter to sign for Wigan. There were real fears that it could be City's Final ever game and the fact that the game was won by a single goal from a local teenager was a real sense of pride for me.
That takes me on to that question posed by Richard Holt in one of his quizzes on here when he asked what only happened six times in the whole of the twentieth century at Cardiff City and yet in the 2014/15 season, there were only two games where it did not happen. The answer was we played a game without a Welsh man in the team and nothing has happened in the past six years to make that enormous contrast less relevant.
There's been a discussion in this thread about whether Joe Ralls counts as an Academy product. My view is that he does because he played a season for the Under 18 team, but I don't see him as a "Cardiff City product". Joe's been a great servant for City and posted a very nice Tweet about his time with us yesterday after making his 250th appearance for the club, but I don't have that connection with him that I did with a Ledley, Ramsey or Gunter.
So, I think there's been a missing emotional connection between City fans and players in the past decade which was always there before, but there's also the practical financial and playing factors to be considered - we're missing out on so much by not producing our own players. There's clearly a desire at the club for this to change with this talk of new training centres and the hiring of the highly regarded David Hughes, but will we finally get a manager who is prepared to take a chance on youth?