[BaggieSteve]

I'm really not sure of the value of our Academy or whether it's worth having one, although I think it's an FA requirement at a certain level. It's just that the management seems to have either no faith in the young players or no desire to play them, but is happy to look at either loans or ageing players who are usually well on the wrong side of 30. I thought this would be a year when we took a step towards bringing through a number of the Academy and younger players into the first team. This is clearly not the case. It may be a case of placing all our eggs into one basket and going for promotion regardless of the implications for the long term future of the club; what I mean is that it should be clear to most of us that the team, as it stands, would not be good enough to compete or stay in the Premier League. If we go up, there will be no young players ready to compete, so we'll be reliant upon bringing in experienced players probably not good enough to play first team football for their existing clubs. There is unlikely to be any substantial investment from our owner even if we are promoted, as his stance is very much that we need to be financially sound, regardless of the league we are playing in.

So, Darren, please start playing some of the younger players before they decide that the Hawthorns is not the place for them