04-02-2020, 11:43
Thanks Matt I'd missed that announcement ………… that didn't happen, so I assumed he had suffered some form of RENDition.
We seem to be deliberately in the business of producing young players to play at around that kind of level for their entire career. Now that could be just how good they actually were in the first place …….. or it could be that it represents exactly the level we train them to.
We choose our most promising juniors, we give them contracts which surely are intended to be the bridge they cross to first team football. At that point they are already good enough for Sheffield, Ilkeston, Staveley and Handsworth AND because we have nowhere for them to develop with us, we send them to those sorts of clubs and they never take a step forward. At best they become a Jacob Hazel or a Wiggins-Thomas. AND we do it over and over again.
Joe Rowley is the only one who in recent years has been a decent chance to make the transition and sadly it appears to be going wrong in his case too. But it remains highly unlikely any player can make the jump to first-team football if the most they will ever get is a few minutes off the bench at 3-0 down.
So we end up in a situation in which we have no money with which to "source" new players and yet invest money in developing youngsters to a level at which they can only play for us if we descend the pyramid even further.
We seem to be deliberately in the business of producing young players to play at around that kind of level for their entire career. Now that could be just how good they actually were in the first place …….. or it could be that it represents exactly the level we train them to.
We choose our most promising juniors, we give them contracts which surely are intended to be the bridge they cross to first team football. At that point they are already good enough for Sheffield, Ilkeston, Staveley and Handsworth AND because we have nowhere for them to develop with us, we send them to those sorts of clubs and they never take a step forward. At best they become a Jacob Hazel or a Wiggins-Thomas. AND we do it over and over again.
Joe Rowley is the only one who in recent years has been a decent chance to make the transition and sadly it appears to be going wrong in his case too. But it remains highly unlikely any player can make the jump to first-team football if the most they will ever get is a few minutes off the bench at 3-0 down.
So we end up in a situation in which we have no money with which to "source" new players and yet invest money in developing youngsters to a level at which they can only play for us if we descend the pyramid even further.