Quote Originally Posted by City123 View Post
I tend to agree, I can think of a few youth team wonderkids who were basically just more physically developed and were nothing special when others caught up to them. Though I think Mozzer may be right in that there would be interest in Lawlor specifically (some was reported fairly recently), but if there were we'd get about 10k out of it.

I was never as high on Reindorf as some others for that reason, I can understand people liking his intensity when we'd been watching Kanga play and he does have some physical attributes, but he had 0 finesse on the ball. I've never really been a fan of us bringing in youngsters released by clubs of a similar stature to ourselves, you need to ask why he didn't make it at Norwich, but that's a separate point

I think what we've seen in football over the past few years is an unhealthy hoovering up of talent which has lead to fans clinging on to the lads that stay. Its always happened to some extent but now its gone into overdrive, you've got Man City signing 14 year olds for millions of pounds and people claiming he's the next Messi. Nobody can tell if a 14 year old will make it as a pro, never mind at the highest level. Tie it in with the rise of social media and all of a sudden you've got people debating the merits of children as footballers (I admit as someone who takes an interest in our under 21 side this is a tad hypocritical, but I've never been interested in much that goes on below that! ). Take that hoovering up of talent and add it to the generally more physically demanding nature of the game favouring young players then all of a sudden you have huge demands and pressure being placed on players years before they hit their traditional peak years, many before they've even finished developing physically
Think you make a lot of good points here, probably not a debate for this thread and we've done it to death before but makes you ask what is the point of an academy at our level. Tan has put millions in and when any of the most promising players get hoovered up for peanuts by the big clubs it can't be a good investment.

And I personally want to see as many young Welsh players in the team as possible, but I just can't see how the academy benefits us right now. All we are doing is hope a few slip through the net that are late bloomers because if they were really good at 15/16 they wouldn't be with us any more. Of course our scouting and transfer committee is also shite which compounds the problem because the players we sign externally from the club are mostly crap too.