What's happened to our academy?

[John from Bootle]

The Daily Hate has quite a long article by Mike Keegan about the Friedkins, Grealish, the accounts and the women's team behind a paywall. Here is the relevant academy section:

Did Micah Richards write this?> "as Everton was at the fag end of the Farhad Moshiri regime"

Annoys me he gets so many pundit gigs when he constantly uses the word 'was' instead of 'were'. At least he doesn't pretend to be a professional journalist though. Really poor writing from a trained journalist that, and that's without even getting started on the fag end metaphor.

 

[Rita_Poon]

...do you think that's how much a 17/18 year old in Chelsea's academy is getting?

chelsea signed and didn't play KDB and mo salah, they eventually took moves and got games elsewhere. they're an outlier ok, but the principal remains, are mummy and daddy that bothered if at 18 or 19 and getting £10k a week is on the cards. Once pro terms are signed, that's it, job done.

mummy and daddy are over the moon getting junior onto the books at port vale for £600 weekly.

 

[Connor]

The majority of our top talent over the last few years has gone on to make really good careers for themselves in the football league. That's a success in itself, even if we aren't seeing the benefits for ourselves.

We've also struggled to keep players at the academy, with City turning quite a few heads recently.

 

[Nymzee]

chelsea signed and didn't play KDB and mo salah, they eventually took moves and got games elsewhere. they're an outlier ok, but the principal remains, are mummy and daddy that bothered if at 18 or 19 and getting £10k a week is on the cards. Once pro terms are signed, that's it, job done.

mummy and daddy are over the moon getting junior onto the books at port vale for £600 weekly.

But the point of the article is that they are not getting to the pro terms stage, certainly not £10k p/w, because of the enormous talent blockage at these big clubs. We are trying to give kids U18's and below a better, clearer pathway.

Anthony Gordon: does he get his breakthrough, his big move, his big wages, his England career if he leaves Everton at 16/17 for a City or Chelsea?

And just for clarity, both Salah and KDB are horrendous examples, Salah had played CL football before Chelsea, and KDB won the league as a starter in Belgium. These are not the type of players being discussed here.

 

[tonyhorne]

Did Micah Richards write this?> "as Everton was at the fag end of the Farhad Moshiri regime"

Annoys me he gets so many pundit gigs when he constantly uses the word 'was' instead of 'were'. At least he doesn't pretend to be a professional journalist though. Really poor writing from a trained journalist that, and that's without even getting started on the fag end metaphor.

It is reasonably common to refer to a football club in the singular. For example Wikipedia states "Everton FC is a professional association football club ...".

Sounds weird to me, though.

Micah Richards is deffo. one of many pundits that make it virtually impossible to watch televised football ...

 

[Eggs]

….it’s getting increasingly difficult to find young talent because kids don’t play footy to the extent we did. Only said to Mrs Eggs this morning how quiet the streets are given it’s Easter holidays, kids don’t play out anymore.

Huge competition for the best prospects these days, the clubs prepared to pay the most often win out.

The strategy of bringing in youngsters like Braiden Graham seems our best hope, although we have brought Armstrong and Gordon through in recent times. The U18s had a decent run in the FA Youth Cup this season which is often a sign of a good player or two but we’ll have to be wide eyed and innovative to win the race when diamonds are discovered.

There are still ‘street footballers’ out there (I often think Rooney was the last of these from a local perspective) but they tend to come from Africa and South America.

 

[Rita_Poon]

i did point out chelsea are an outlier.

kids can't sign pro terms until they're an adult?

outside of wonderballs at arsenal, are there many kids getting minutes in the PL this season?

bit of a nonsense article really, we had hot property like ledson recently, but the case goes cold.

some make it, some don't, some have time away or even play abroad before coming back. we should be thankful we don't have a situation like in france where agents get prospects in and rinse them as soon as they can then dump them literally on the streets.

I suppose using chelsea as a stepping stone paid off for D-Hall, a year on their books, a few appearances then a move to us on terms I reckon far eclipse what he was getting at leicester.

 

[John from Bootle]

It is reasonably common to refer to a football club in the singular. For example Wikipedia states "Everton FC is a professional association football club ...".

Sounds weird to me, though.

Micah Richards is deffo. one of many pundits that make it virtually impossible to watch televised football ...

That might be so mate but in the context of the full sentence, it's wrong: "When a club is struggling to pay its bills, as Everton was..."

 

[Joey66]

….it’s getting increasingly difficult to find young talent because kids don’t play footy to the extent we did. Only said to Mrs Eggs this morning how quiet the streets are given it’s Easter holidays, kids don’t play out anymore.

Huge competition for the best prospects these days, the clubs prepared to pay the most often win out.

The strategy of bringing in youngsters like Braiden Graham seems our best hope, although we have brought Armstrong and Gordon through in recent times. The U18s had a decent run in the FA Youth Cup this season which is often a sign of a good player or two but we’ll have to be wide eyed and innovative to win the race when diamonds are discovered.

There are still ‘street footballers’ out there (I often think Rooney was the last of these from a local perspective) but they tend to come from Africa and South America.

You could argue junior football reams in areas & leisure centres are around now & no need to play football in the streets plus some parks have all weather pitches etc - the influx of the lift of a ban to only playing 3 players from outside our country & sky monies to fund big wages has been a determent to younger English players - plus the lower leagues are in danger of going bust only six teams in the championship & lower leagues down to the nation wide are in the black - the rest are struggling to survive .....

 

[Rita_Poon]

….it’s getting increasingly difficult to find young talent because kids don’t play footy to the extent we did.

have you seen the caper at the bbc this week?
and school fields have been built on.
county lines and knife gangs have put an end to sociable football for kids.
schools are failing, no one has any money, there's perverts on every street corner, kids live online and are being groomed into all sorts, the modern age is not ours, the world has changed. The abomination of a world cup this summer is going to make the one in qatar look quaint and twee.

for instance, I can't name you the dutch captain today, but I know Gullit was not to be messed about when he was leading the lads in orange.

 

[atrottel]

i did point out chelsea are an outlier.

kids can't sign pro terms until they're an adult?

outside of wonderballs at arsenal, are there many kids getting minutes in the PL this season?

bit of a nonsense article really, we had hot property like ledson recently, but the case goes cold.

some make it, some don't, some have time away or even play abroad before coming back. we should be thankful we don't have a situation like in france where agents get prospects in and rinse them as soon as they can then dump them literally on the streets.

I suppose using chelsea as a stepping stone paid off for D-Hall, a year on their books, a few appearances then a move to us on terms I reckon far eclipse what he was getting at leicester.

We have a deserved reputation for turning out solid hard-working pros who go on to decent Championship and Football League careers. For example, I noticed an article mentioning Liam Walsh the other day. Hadn't heard anything of him for ages but he's still playing in League One for Luton Town. Same with Ledson and quite a few others.

So we need to step it up a level. Easier said than done, of course.

I think the article was talking more about getting to youth players like Garner and KDH before they just fail to make the grade because of the tough competition at the top clubs and showing them (maybe using those two players as an example) how the club can make their first-team dreams more of a possibility.

(Interestingly, not sure that Aznou or Dibling really fit into that template. George, on the other hand, might have done.)

 

[Dymak]

I’m not sure if this counts, but both Ellis Simms and Tom Cannon were both from our academy, and their sales came in very handy at a time when we didn’t have a pot to piss in.

Simms would have likely got some game time if we hadn’t needed to sell.

 

[MichaelEFC96]

Hasn’t the academy been restructured with the highly regarded Nick Cox coming in to oversee it? Could take a few years until we start seeing the results I think

 

[MikeH72]

We neglected it basically from the moment Moshiri came into the club, because he didn’t understand how football works and thought the aim of the game was to just buy your way to success.

 

[pfim]

No money=poor academy, as the article states