Have heard this quite a lot over the last few years. Hopefully it is true this time/we actually bring some through to the 1st team, even if it does take another 5/6 years.
Unless you see the u15/16 regularly, and I don’t, it can be difficult to assess just how good they are. I use a couple of indicators to maybe highlight promising youngsters coming through. One is playing up an age early, the other is playing at youth level for a strong country like England. So far we haven’t started any u16 in our u18s this season, which is quite unusual at this stage. And apart from a goalkeeper we don’t have any regular U16s with England, although we have one with Wales u16.
Those are just observations, it may be that we have a number of talented players but they’re being held back by injury, age group planning by Baines or whatever. The outstanding 15 year olds though are being pushed into u21s by other clubs, so it does worry me a bit that we’re not seeing the talent coming through at u16 level yet this season.