14-11-2017, 13:02
Yes it could be Pooch ....... but it seems unlikely.
Tendayi seemed to come through despite an awful loan at Barrow, but he did well at Hinckley I think ......... but it's the local loans I worry about, they always seem like a precursor to failure. Morrison, Hazel, Beesley all managed a first team game or so and were pushed back down the pyramid to Matlock, all failed and it seems like Matlock wasn't so much an opportunity but a goodbye kiss.
If you were a young player and you'd got a Man of the Match on loan at Alfreton and then you were moved down the pyramid to Sheffield and Matlock would you think you were going anywhere good? And if you can't believe in your own future, then it is highly unlikely anything good's gonna to happen.
If the problem with Ricky German were that he isn't putting in the work, getting him a game at a level where he can probably look decent without putting in the work isn't going to help. Obviously you don't want a loan to be to a level where a youngster is just going to drown, but equally surely they must stretch themselves.
It seems to me we have had constraints, probably financial, within the club that have provided a block to youth development. We have no team internally where an ex-Junior might develop and externally we seem determined to plug on with cheapskate options which have zero record of success. And it wastes money; why spend money developing talent to the verge of the level you require then let it wither away?
The answer with us seems to be a player has suddenly to make the death-defying leap from junior to first team and hang on in there ...... like Kevin Davies, Ernie Moss and Joe Rowley. A loan is virtually irrelevant as Laurance Maguire's success at Fylde proved. All you need to block the process is to have a thug like Chris Morgan whispering in your ear before your one first team game "put yourself about son, give 'em stick," and you end up playing a kind of game you never used in the Juniors. And that's your one real chance. GONE FOREVER!
Our aim should be to MAKE these youngsters into league players, not to pretend that none of them were good enough in the first place. Six months ago, when we gave them contracts we were surely passing judgement that we thought YES they had a decent chance of making it. Our job should surely be to make good on that.
Properly monitored, given targets, being told what will happen next in his development ...... there's no reason a loan at Matlock couldn't be a huge success for one of our youngsters. BUT at the moment GC's legacy to Jack is that this is a very difficult story for youngsters to believe. They see a tragically unsuccessful first team in which they cannot gain a foothold for themselves blocked out by loanees from other clubs struggling to make good on their own careers.........
At some point we surely have to ask why we have so many players who have been progressing backwards - Maguire, Brewster, Mitchell (at a rate of knots), German, Wakefield .......? Much as I'm hopeful that Jack Lester is the real deal ...... at the moment he is necessarily doing a lot of fire-fighting ........ I just hope he has enough managerial talent around him for someone to notice that in just those five names there are five players who have at some point in their young lives shown the ability to succeed in the first team. And now we may be relying on Maguire to do it.
Tendayi seemed to come through despite an awful loan at Barrow, but he did well at Hinckley I think ......... but it's the local loans I worry about, they always seem like a precursor to failure. Morrison, Hazel, Beesley all managed a first team game or so and were pushed back down the pyramid to Matlock, all failed and it seems like Matlock wasn't so much an opportunity but a goodbye kiss.
If you were a young player and you'd got a Man of the Match on loan at Alfreton and then you were moved down the pyramid to Sheffield and Matlock would you think you were going anywhere good? And if you can't believe in your own future, then it is highly unlikely anything good's gonna to happen.
If the problem with Ricky German were that he isn't putting in the work, getting him a game at a level where he can probably look decent without putting in the work isn't going to help. Obviously you don't want a loan to be to a level where a youngster is just going to drown, but equally surely they must stretch themselves.
It seems to me we have had constraints, probably financial, within the club that have provided a block to youth development. We have no team internally where an ex-Junior might develop and externally we seem determined to plug on with cheapskate options which have zero record of success. And it wastes money; why spend money developing talent to the verge of the level you require then let it wither away?
The answer with us seems to be a player has suddenly to make the death-defying leap from junior to first team and hang on in there ...... like Kevin Davies, Ernie Moss and Joe Rowley. A loan is virtually irrelevant as Laurance Maguire's success at Fylde proved. All you need to block the process is to have a thug like Chris Morgan whispering in your ear before your one first team game "put yourself about son, give 'em stick," and you end up playing a kind of game you never used in the Juniors. And that's your one real chance. GONE FOREVER!
Our aim should be to MAKE these youngsters into league players, not to pretend that none of them were good enough in the first place. Six months ago, when we gave them contracts we were surely passing judgement that we thought YES they had a decent chance of making it. Our job should surely be to make good on that.
Properly monitored, given targets, being told what will happen next in his development ...... there's no reason a loan at Matlock couldn't be a huge success for one of our youngsters. BUT at the moment GC's legacy to Jack is that this is a very difficult story for youngsters to believe. They see a tragically unsuccessful first team in which they cannot gain a foothold for themselves blocked out by loanees from other clubs struggling to make good on their own careers.........
At some point we surely have to ask why we have so many players who have been progressing backwards - Maguire, Brewster, Mitchell (at a rate of knots), German, Wakefield .......? Much as I'm hopeful that Jack Lester is the real deal ...... at the moment he is necessarily doing a lot of fire-fighting ........ I just hope he has enough managerial talent around him for someone to notice that in just those five names there are five players who have at some point in their young lives shown the ability to succeed in the first team. And now we may be relying on Maguire to do it.