The Myth of our youth policy

[itbrvilla]

I actually disagree with that. Barkley and Janusaj are making an impact because they're prodigious talents. I don't see that tells us we should be playing grealish

Our youngsters would make more of an impact if they had a better team around them. Putting them in a failing team/system will only negatively impact on the young players.

[supertom]

I actually disagree with that. Barkley and Janusaj are making an impact because they're prodigious talents. I don't see that tells us we should be playing grealish

Our youngsters would make more of an impact if they had a better team around them. Putting them in a failing team/system will only negatively impact on the young players.

Ridgewell, Cahill, Gardner and Whitts were all introduced into a relegation threatened side. We might debate how good they are at the moment (bar Cahill who's a top 4 player now) but I don't think it negatively effected them too badly. I think it helped strengthen their resolve early on. Granted they had a lot of quality seniors with them which helps, and is something we need to address currently.

We're negatively impacting on Lamberts young, questionnable signings as it is. We may as well give our own products a go too. If they don't  have the natural strength to handle it at the moment, it's very hard to get that with the benefit of a couple more years of maturity. You have that strength when you 18-19 or you don't. You can develop it, but it's hard if it hasn't come naturally. It's like for example a player like Vassell. A hell of a lot of talent but the boy never quite pushed himself hard enough and didn't have enough belief in himself. He could have been a fantastic player. Then you have a very self confident, somewhat arrogant player like Savage who was incredibly limited but had a hell of a career given his actual ability.

Give em a taste and keep feeding them drips here and there see what they've got. If we've got a good track record of producing players who play in the top two divisions, then our youngsters should be good enough to get in our current squad. Most of our squad is Champ-Lower Prem quality. We've produced a large amount of players of that standard ourselves over the last decade whether they've stayed or moved on.
If we're not producing a Rooney, so be it. But we're hardly blessed with a squad of Youngs, Barry's, Petrovs, Milners, Laursens, Mellbergs at the moment. If anything, with the team as it is, it gives our youngens more chance of standing out. And because they're our own they'll get a little more leighway from the fans than someone like Bowery for example.

[Ian.]

There is enough going on to be unhappy about about supporting Villa at the moment, we're in a rebuilding situation which has taken a setback on the way. Hopefully this will improve this year. To have a dig at a youth policy/academy which has thrived over the years and has been very successful is just trying to find a negative which just isn't there. Credit where credits due in our academy I would say and I for one am proud of out setup and products which have come from it.

[supertom]

There is enough going on to be unhappy about about supporting Villa at the moment, we're in a rebuilding situation which has taken a setback on the way. Hopefully this will improve this year. To have a dig at a youth policy/academy which has thrived over the years and has been very successful is just trying to find a negative which just isn't there. Credit where credits due in our academy I would say and I for one am proud of out setup and products which have come from it.

In total agreement. Picking out two examples from Everton is all well and good, but we've got a lot of players who've either been nurtured in our academy since childhood, or from being plucked in their mid-teens, who now play in the Prem. And there's a few still playing in the Champ too. We've got an impressive track record. But for O Neill selling a few a tad too quickly perhaps (to be replaced with overpaid, average players already established in cases) we might have kept a few more  for longer. Certainly the Cahill debate always pops up often on here. He'd actually done reasonably well for O Neill before we cashed in and then bought Knight and Davies for big money.

If a big chunk of our squad aren't yet Prem quality, as seems to be the case, then why not play some more of our own academy players, who've proved over the years to be capable in the top flight, either here or pastures new. Why is it Lambert has reverted back to a player like Albrighton who seemed like he was destined to fade away? He's not brilliant, but Lambert bought in a few players who can play Albrightons sort of position, who seem a long way off. Tonev, Bacuna and Bowery have all played wide for us. That we've reverted back to a tried and test academy graduate who seemed out of favour with Lambert initially (even when he happened to be fit) says something I think.

We're buying a lot of players valued around the 1 mill mark. It seems a waste when our academy at the very least would appear to be producing similar, if not better quality.

[Ian.]

Maybe Lambert has made a clanger on some of his signings and has found that some are not quite ready yet, or good enough which I think is too early to say yet. Marc has that bit more experience than his signings too. To be fair he never bombed him out like some of the others (Ireland, Warnock an Hutton), Marc has struggled with injuries for a while now. Lambert probably had a idea of a way he wanted us to play and these players in his mind, might have fitted that better. With one thing or another we have a few dinks in the progress to say the least.

But going back to the original opening post we have done very well over the years and I agree we might not have found a major star (yet) but not many clubs do that very often.

[supertom]

A lot is being made of Barkley right now but it's very early days. If he was 22-23 and breaking in now would his performances be worthy of so much praise, or stand out as much? I'm not sure. That he broke in at 18 I think people judge more purely on raw ability, which he has plenty of. I think there's a bit more pressure on a younger player to perform week in, week out once they start getting passed that 22-3 mark. At 18-19 you can come in express yourself. If it's a bit much or the consistency drops they can be eased off on, but you can put the lack of consistency and errors down to age. You have a good grace period of 4-5 years. If you break through at 22-3, then you've got a year or 2. Once you hit 25 you're expected to have consistency down. You can't keep making errors and you have to look the part at this level. There's less of a grace period, and more of a pressure to hit the ground running. The younger a player, the more forgiving I think fans are too. I mean we overlooked a lot of errors in Gareth Barry from often overplaying at the back, because he looked such a good player. That he was only 17 breaking through was part of that. Had he been 22, I think we'd have been less forgiving.

Who's not to say we don't have a player or two at the moment who might look as promising if we put them in the side? Robinson impresses me a lot, as does Grealish. Johnson looks very able in midfield too, and his time needs to come soon. We don't want to put too many in one go, but 2-3 of our boys breaking into the side right now would be good and I'd wager might add a little positivity and good will among the fans. For me it certainly would. I'd rather see our home grown players rather than a lot of these cheap punts from lower leagues and abroad.

[Toronto Villa]

I know it's early days, but Pulis seems to be getting the best from him.

maybe Bannan never thought he'd get bombed out of Villa Park is now eating some humble pie. He had a lot of talent and if his head was on straight I wish he'd have stayed with us because he is precisely the type of players that we could do with. Thing is the game cannot wait for you and I just think he's looked at this as a new opportunity. Good for him if is turning it around.

[Matt Collins]

A lot is being made of Barkley right now but it's very early days. If he was 22-23 and breaking in now would his performances be worthy of so much praise, or stand out as much? I'm not sure. That he broke in at 18 I think people judge more purely on raw ability, which he has plenty of. I think there's a bit more pressure on a younger player to perform week in, week out once they start getting passed that 22-3 mark. At 18-19 you can come in express yourself. If it's a bit much or the consistency drops they can be eased off on, but you can put the lack of consistency and errors down to age. You have a good grace period of 4-5 years. If you break through at 22-3, then you've got a year or 2. Once you hit 25 you're expected to have consistency down. You can't keep making errors and you have to look the part at this level. There's less of a grace period, and more of a pressure to hit the ground running. The younger a player, the more forgiving I think fans are too. I mean we overlooked a lot of errors in Gareth Barry from often overplaying at the back, because he looked such a good player. That he was only 17 breaking through was part of that. Had he been 22, I think we'd have been less forgiving.

Who's not to say we don't have a player or two at the moment who might look as promising if we put them in the side? Robinson impresses me a lot, as does Grealish. Johnson looks very able in midfield too, and his time needs to come soon. We don't want to put too many in one go, but 2-3 of our boys breaking into the side right now would be good and I'd wager might add a little positivity and good will among the fans. For me it certainly would. I'd rather see our home grown players rather than a lot of these cheap punts from lower leagues and abroad.

For me, you can just tell. Like you could with Rooney, Ferdinand, Owen and Gerrard

The guy's absolutely class. Too much ability not to make it unless he has an injury or does a Michael Johnson

[Big Dick Edwards]

The answer to the question depends on your definition of success. Yes, we haven't produced a supremely talented player like a Wayne Rooney, a Michael Owen or a Gareth Bale but the fact is that Craig Gardner, Liam Ridgewell, Steve Davis, Peter Whittingham, Boaz Myhill, Nathan Baker, Ciaran Clark, Gabby Agbolahor, Barry Bannan, Marc Albrighton and Gary Cahill are all enjoying lucrative Premier League careers. Until recently you could also have added Luke Moore to this list. Ask these players the same question. I personally don't think there's any doubt we have an outstanding Academy.

[PaulMcGrathsNo5Shirt]

I think the stable set up we have at youth level helps us enormously in bringing through the young players. Then, when they start knocking on the door of the first team we lose them somewhat. A succession of managers and coaches fail to continue their development to the level we require to move the club forwards. Yes, the likes of Bannan, Hogg, Myhill, Ridge well etc will go on and form themselves good careers in the game, but only Cahill has gone on (and Steven Davis) to become established Internationals. Fundamentally, a succession of managers have failed to develop these promising young players to their potential level.

[SoccerHQ]

What's really helped Rooney and now Barkley for example was the fact they were thrown in very young and had the talent to make it. There comes a point where early promise can start stagnating if players get a taste and then suddenly find themselves not given the time to develop quickly. I think Fonzy should have been handled far better by O Neill because that boy had talent to burn. But the O Neill way is to not really use substitutions unless he has to. Even at times when the Fonz notched an appearence in the Prem, it would be 5 minutes.

Even in games we'd have comfortably won, ideal opportunity to give the lad 20 minutes, and it wouldn't happen. The rest of the time he wasn't even on the bench. No space among all the overpaid mediocrity. Had O Neill gone about things the right way he'd have had 2-3 youngens on his bench most games, to allow the opportunity to bed them in and develop for the future. Bannan had way more natural ability than dross like Sidwell for example.

We're now seeing the likes of Johnson, Robinson and Grealish etc all edging in and around that 20 mark. When they're not having the odd month or two on loan they need to be in and around the first team. In terms of technique, we've got a number of very gifted players coming through. But we need to look at the examples of Bannan and Fonzie. They had talent but I don't think they were handled quite right. Getting a sniff in the Europa and pre-season tournaments gave them a taste but they needed better bedding in. They also didn't need to get paid so handsomely, so soon. Its strange to me though because O Neill really rate Fonzie but he barely played him in the Premiership. Ditto Bannan. Very well thought of at the club 4=5 years ago. We were all impressed with Alby after the peace cup and expected him to be broken in the following season. It didn't really happen. 6 appearances in all.

Get the lads in and get them playing. We need a bit more ability and if our youth team isn't producing players with more ability than KEA, Sylla, Tonev, Bowery etc, it really does have problems. I don't buy into this too soon thing. If they're good enough, they'll shine, even in a faltering side. Davis was really good for us under O Leary, despite the side being poor. His career went downward when O Neill took over and Davis could only ever get a game playing wide. Bed them in and in conjunction with that, give them the odd month or two out on loan alongside that. But there's no good waiting 2-3 years to get Grealish in the side for example. Get him in now, see how he handles it. In 2-3 years his development might have been stilted, or someone else younger might steal his thunder a little, and his chance.

A big problem we've had was we don't use the loan system well enough with our young players. 09/10 is a good example of this. How many times was the Fonz and unused sub in the prem, I would guess at 20 matches. Would've done the world of good for him, Clark and Albrighton to all go out on loan that season or at least for half of it particularly after we lost to Vienna in Europe. That way when they were all suddenly being asked to play week in week out in the prem the next season that would've helped them.

At least Lambert seems to get this so rather than just keep Grealish and Samir Carruthers on the fringes here and winning every week in the reserves, he's sent both out on loan which I believe will give both a better chance of making it here as both seem to be doing really well in league 1.

[dcdavecollett]

I saw Whittingham play on-loan for Derby at Hillsborough in the winter of 2005. Gabby was playing on-loan for Wednesday in the same match.

[paul_e]

I think the stable set up we have at youth level helps us enormously in bringing through the young players. Then, when they start knocking on the door of the first team we lose them somewhat. A succession of managers and coaches fail to continue their development to the level we require to move the club forwards. Yes, the likes of Bannan, Hogg, Myhill, Ridge well etc will go on and form themselves good careers in the game, but only Cahill has gone on (and Steven Davis) to become established Internationals. Fundamentally, a succession of managers have failed to develop these promising young players to their potential level.

I think you can safely count Clark and Weimann as established internationals now - both have played for their country more often than not for the last 18months (when fit) and Bannan and Myhill have enough caps to be considered as well.  That's a good return in anyone's book, add in the likes of Gabby, Ridgewell, Gardner and Whittingham who're all established players at their clubs and it's hard to argue that our academy isn't one of the best in the league.  I agree that we haven't really had anyone top drawer (Cahill and Gabby aren't far off that though) but, like above I think where we're letting the kids down is in the 17-20 transition.  We have the opportunity with Grealish, Robinson, Johnson, etc to try again as they all seem to have the technical aspects needed, it's just about getting this next bit right.

I hope a couple of those guys get a chance at the weekend.  I'm not advocating a reserve team in the fa cup but I do think it can and should be a chance to play with a bit less pressure and have some of the kids around the squad and given cameos.

[Dribbler]

I think the stable set up we have at youth level helps us enormously in bringing through the young players. Then, when they start knocking on the door of the first team we lose them somewhat. A succession of managers and coaches fail to continue their development to the level we require to move the club forwards. Yes, the likes of Bannan, Hogg, Myhill, Ridge well etc will go on and form themselves good careers in the game, but only Cahill has gone on (and Steven Davis) to become established Internationals. Fundamentally, a succession of managers have failed to develop these promising young players to their potential level.

I think that hits the nail on the head re development. I remember when there was talk of Klinsmann becoming manager and reading up on his footballing philosophy and in particular what he'd done with Germany. The one thing he stressed was amazingly important was to have the youth set up playing the same way as the senior side, so that there was a continuous philosophy of football from youth to senior level and so a natural progression of players through the ranks, who when they got to the senior level had less trouble stepping up as the football was familiar to them and they naturally understood the system they were playing in.

I think as a club we have been particularly poor at defining a club philosophy of how we want to play football. Our youth products actually seem to be taught a very good brand of pass and move football, and a few times in the last few seasons when we had a lot of our homegrown talent playing, we seemed to have played some of our best football. Fast, flowing, technically astute pass and move football. The Man Utd home game a couple of seasons ago springs to mind.

The problem is, on the pitch our first team managers have played a far from consistent brand of football, and Randy's lurching of appointments from MoN to Houllier, to McLeish to Lambert shows that he's not really had a clear vision of the kind of football we should be playing, and that's hindered us massively over the last few years.

Houllier i think would have been able to develop the youth well and promote a more consistent football philosophy through the club which would have helped their development. I think his vision of football is more like how our youth reams are taught to play. MoN and McLeish however, stifled their development because either they wouldn't use the youth, or the way they did use them was alien to the football they had developed with. I'm not quite sure about Lambert yet.

I think then if our youth had the opportunity to develop and work into a first team playing good football, they would have done better. Or at least better for us. It also helps if they have good senior players to train and play with and so learn from. Would you want up and coming defenders playing and learning from the likes of Dunne and Collins, or the likes of Laursen and McGrath? Our youth development then has also been hindered by the fact that we've often had to throw far too many of them in at the deep end at once, and that they've not had the most stable and skillful of teams to develop and blend into.

Maybe players have to leave the club they develop at to find a team that plays the right kind of football for them, or a manager that will play them in the right kind of role and utilize their skills. It does seem that we've let an awful lot of players go in the last few years that have gone on to have fairly solid, though not necessarily spectacular, premiership careers.

[Rancid custard]

It's a bit of a bit of this and a bit of that really. I think our squad what with the recurring injuries and managerial merry go round don't help. One managers vision of how he wants the team to play may not conform to what's being taught at academy level, The fact that last season 3 or 4 kids were just bundled into the team through necessity rather than merit, in an ideal world you'd pick your best 11 for the big matches and maybe when you're playing a bottom 6 side put one of the kids in to the established team. Then you actually have the first 11 themselves, not all world class. If I were someone like Baker, I would imagine that being next to someone like Vlaar I wouldn't learn half as much as being next to someone like God.

Then there's the hype machine. A few posters will talk about seeing the one kid who dominates the game, has a good pass and an eye for goal and then we all expect too much too soon. The one most people rave about is normally the one who doesn't quite make it.