::rant alert::
The new elite status classification for our youth setup will help improve these numbers. We can recruit nationally which obviously opens up the access to talent and in theory provides more opportunity to secure great players.
You can also argue that developing a Rooney is more valuable than developing four second-choice players (who might sell for 2-3m each) who are technically employed as "big five" footballers.
If we're into debunking myths however ... why not debunk a *real* myth:
Villa, West Ham, Newcastle, Southampton, Leeds and Reading are ahead (or tied) with us. Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Blackburn are close enough that it makes no difference.
So after you got upset about them being "ahead of us" did you stop to think that none of those clubs are really ahead of us where it matters? For those teams ahead of us why hasn't their "better" focus on youth made them a better team than us? Or if they "cashed in" then why haven't the funds they got from selling these players to bigger clubs helped them (you could argue it helped Newcastle last year but that is looking increasingly like the one-hit wonder most of us expected)?
I'm not suggesting we give up on youth -- the elite status is a very good accomplishment and should help us push on. However anyone expecting this to be some cure-all will be bitterly disappointed. Villa have been twice as good at us (according to this) at developing youth and yet they are still Villa. So we could double our performance and be as good as ... Villa!
It's a piece of the puzzle no doubt. If you combine better youth with a superior player acquisition strategy (which we have had compared with most teams) it will help.
That said the youth market is a little bit more like the senior player market than most people want to admit. Barca do a great job no doubt but a lot is self-fulfilling -- the best players want to play there. Arsenal have purchased a lot of their "youth setup." They added approx. 50% to their score with secondary players -- we have 0 secondary players. They'd actually be below Villa (also zero secondary) without the secondary credit. Barca don't have a lot of secondary but they are getting pretty much first choice at everyone anyway and filling up their spots to the point they don't need to (can't?) go that route. The second tier of elite clubs (like Arsenal) get first choice at the players they all missed a few years ago and the third tier get (practically) none.
You have to develop (or purchase) players who are better than your existing players. If our players are mostly 5th-6th in the Prem players (with a few CL players) we need to develop CL players from our youth system and retain them. The players we sell (if we assume we will only sell non-CL talent level players) need to pay for CL talent if we want to get better. Otherwise we are just treading water by exchanging one average player for another average player (which is what all those "sell to buy" teams do every year and never get anywhere).
Even worse is when you exchange one elite player for multiple average players (we're better at transfers than most clubs but we've done this). We already have average players -- adding more doesn't help (aside from bench quality but that is more crisis prevention than progress). You could develop twenty average prem players and be near the top of that chart and never progress because they are all average. The club might make a tidy profit but that does its fans no good.
Elite status will improve us but without good management at every level it means you can very easily waste whatever advantage (which is likely smaller than people think) it provides. If you're lucky enough to develop a great player you also have to retain them -- selling elite players to buy average players is failure and prevents progress. Sounds obvious but every team above us on that list (and us) do it every single year. Quality not quantity is the key.
Fair point about the league table being really all that matters, but we would benefit from unearthing more young players of international quality. Southampton for instance have done that, but were in no position to keep hold of Walcott, Bale or Oxade-Chamberlain. West Ham had their generation of Ferdinand, Carrick, Johnson, Cole, Defoe and Lampard. Leeds had a strong generation as well in Robinson, Harte, Kewell, Smith and Woodgate. United obviously had theirs. Liverpool had a good group that gained a lot of international caps.
That kind of thing would be a massive boost given our lack of funds for buying in players, but it's not something we've ever achieved, with only Rooney being of that level, and he unfortunately came a bit too early for us to keep him. The likes of Osman and Hibbert, and even Anichebe, are decent PL players and have helped get us to where we are, but to get that little bit further we need talent of a slightly higher calibre.
