Why have we not been more successful in bringing through our academy - for us?

[Toronto Villa]

Took this from someone I follow on Twitter; Villa Underground. Thought it was a good article and continues to beg the question why despite having contributed so many professional footballers over the years at various levels, why so few relatively have played and made a career of it with us? And I don't have the actual numbers but given we have probably shelled out the best part of 250m plus in the past 10 years, much of it on players who have failed us badly why haven't we used/invested in our academy more?

SPOTLIGHT: WHY HAS THE ASTON VILLA YOUTH ACADEMY FAILED FOR SO LONG?
Joseph Mullane | February 19, 2019 | Spotlight | 4 Comments



WHY HAS THE ASTON VILLA YOUTH ACADEMY FAILED FOR SO LONG? WHY DOES IT SEEM SO MANY OF OUR PROMISING YOUTH PLAYERS NEVER GO ON TO ACHIEVE THEIR FULL POTENTIAL; AT VILLA THAT IS?
Contributed by Joseph Mullane | Edited by Dan Rogers

Having a successful youth academy is something which has been outlined as a priority by our new regime with Christian Purslow stating it as vital towards ensuring Villa become sustainable. How do Villa do this?

Firstly, it’s useful to look at successful examples of other clubs who develop their youth players most effectively. The best examples do tend to be the ones at the top. The likes of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester City and most Premier League teams either have former youngsters in their team or youngsters under 20 around their squad (or on loan).  It must be questioned why Aston Villa have so few.

LOANS
Liverpool have 10 players under 21 out on loan gaining first team experience in addition to having Trent Alexander-Arnold [20] and has already 43 first team appearances and Joe Gomez [21] and has 41 appearances. Manchester United brought through Rashford, Lingard, McTominay who all made their debuts at 18 years of age and are all in and around the first team now. Not to mention all the youngsters they have out on loan under 21 as well, like Tuanzebe.



This is all the more impressive when they came through under Jose Mourinho’s supervision, a manager notorious for not developing youth players.

Tottenham have Kane, Rose, Winks, Walker-Pieters who came through their youth system and played in the first team at either a young age or got loans spells elsewhere. Arsenal, similarly, have Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Bellerin as Arsenal youth academy alumni.

You might say these are the top young players from the countries top youth academy’s and so it is expected they would start their careers at a younger age, which is a fair point.  So, for comparison,  let’s look at the academy players at clubs lower down the league.

Everton (mid-table) have Tom Davies, Tyrias Browning [17 on their debuts] and Dominic Calvert-Lewin who was 18 on his debut for Everton.

Southampton have Targett, Gallagher, and Ward-Prowse who all came through their youth system and, again, made their professional debuts at either 17 or 18 years of age.

Crystal Palace? Wan-Bissaka and Zaha were just 18 and 17 respectively on their debuts. These clubs are 15th and 16th in the Premier League as the time of this article being written and have given debuts to many other youth players in their teens whilst in the top flight.



In The Championship most clubs have been willing to test their teenagers. This was evident even during our December draw against Preston.  Ethan Walker and Adam O’Reilly were 16 and 17 years old when featuring at Deepdale against Villa.

Maybe its just the clubs below us that test their teenagers?  Well, Derby, Middlesbrough and Norwich have all tried teenagers in the championship this season and are all in the top 6.  Further, Leeds have used 5 players 18 and under this campaign and are vying for an automatic promotion place.

The two youngest players to start for Aston Villa in the league this season are Tammy Abraham and Axel Tuanzebe who are both 21 and on loan from other clubs.  Only Jacob Ramsay [17], who made a 30 minute substitute appearance in the defeat to West Brom, has featured for Villa.

Other clubs who are currently higher than Villa in the table are clearly focused upon providing a gateway from the youth team to the first team and so appears an area where we are falling behind.



This very issue outlines the key reason that so many of the Villa youth fail to make the grade; they’re just brought in too late. Young players should be getting game-time at the age of 17-18. Villa tend to keep players in the youth team and leave them to stagnate, very occasionally getting one or two substitute appearances.  For some, 17 or 18 might sound far too young, however, many other clubs don’t think seem to agree, as outlined above.  Indeed, the above stands as evidence that this is now the norm. Further, there is a clear correlation between picking players at a young age, which we don’t do, and those same young players going on to have successful careers.

What is worse is that we have actually had pretty successful youth teams with good potential, yet so few have gone on to play for Villa.

There are arguably lots of reasons for this; poor coaching, an unsettled senior squad- or quite simply not having a good enough senior side to help bed these players in, not giving enough experience, whether on loan or at Villa, from a young enough age and lack of patience with youth players in the first team and instead relying on older players for short-term solutions.

We have had successful youth teams in the last 10 years and how many of those promising players have gone on to achieve their potential at Aston Villa?

CAREER LADDER
Through the last 10 years we have had a youth teams filled with the likes of Ciaran Clark, Nathan Baker, Eric Lichaj, Barry Bannan, Marc Albrighton, Andreas Weimann, Callum Robinson, Daniel Johnson, Jonathan Hogg, Steven Davis, Enda Stevens and yes… Craig and Gary Gardner.

All of these players were let go by Villa and are now either playing regularly in the Premier League or at the same level that we’re playing. Right now we only have Keinan Davis (who hasn’t played in the league this season), Andre Green who was barely used out on loan at Portsmouth and Jack Grealish in our squad who came through the youth team.



To think how many of these youngsters could have been given a chance than the dross we have signed for millions and ended up moving on at a massive loss and did nothing for the first team. Think back to when we spent millions on Charles N’Zogbia and giving over £60k a week whilst we also refused to give Marc Albrighton a new contract because he asked for £35k. He then went on to start every game in Leicester’s title winning season.

Who can forget selling Gary Cahill only to then sign Zat Knight? What about bringing in Jean II Makoun whilst simultaneously dropping and subsequently selling Jonathan Hogg, who then went on to get his next two clubs to play off finals and now plays regularly in the Premier League?

Could we also look back on the John Terry deal in a similar vein where we sold a Nathan Baker who was relatively young, came through the youth ranks and did well in his previous championship season, for a player who was only ever going to be a short-term solution? It is hardly inconceivable for Baker to be another who may go on to play regular Premier League football.

What is worse though, is we never seemed to learn lessons.

Even when we have decided to loan a youth player out, it has been to a club with no intention of actually using the player.

As already mentioned this was the case with Andre Green but it was also true for Easah Suliman, yet another player at risk of being released with wasted potential.  Suliman was Captain of England under 16, 17 and 19 sides, the under 19’s who won the youth under 19 world championship where he actually scored the goal in the final, and also won the Premier League Youth Cup with Villa last season.

For a player of only 19 years old he had an impressive resume.  The next step was crucial.  So Villa sent him out on loan to Grimsby, where he was never selected and was simply signed to be a back up rather than having a guaranteed first team opportunity.  All was not lost but time.  Villa had a chance to rectify this, so in the summer (2018) we surely would have learnt from our lessons.  Nope. We send Suliman to FC Emmen where again he rarely featured. Now his contract is up at the end of the season, with any prospect of renewal unclear.



This was the same with Matija Sarkic’s loan to Wigan where he similarly failed to make a single appearance last season. These were poor loans under Steve Bruce’s tenure. The temptation to say “Well that’s typical Bruce” is strong, I know but this isn’t a Bruce problem, it’s a Villa problem. Go back 10 years to under O’Neill and he also didn’t opt to send players out to get experience , despite having a very promising youth team who got to the Youth Cup Semi Final, before being beaten by Chelsea.

The only individual  given game time under O’Neill was Nathan Delfouneso, who was funnily enough the one with possibly the least potential. This pretty much sums up Villa’s youth policy. Is it more likely that we have just had thousands of Villa youngsters not good enough OR have none of them been developed properly? It can’t be a coincidence that many players go on to perform elsewhere but struggle to break through at Villa Park.

PATIENCE
Youngsters need a patient club, a consistent run of games under a manager who backs them and for those games to come in a settled side with good senior players to guide them or at the very least a club that will arrange for them to get a loan at a club willing to play them.

Villa haven’t had a good settled side for years and when we did, as under O’Neill, no youngsters were never given a run in the team.   Supporters can assume players aren’t good enough despite never actually seeing them play. It’s a philosophy which has run through the club and the fan-base that a youngster can’t be ready to play for Aston Villa and there is a presumption that fans on the whole would rather spend £3 million on an 30+ year old player whose career is behind them [Tommy Elphick?] than give a youngster an opportunity to develop.

A lot of you though will be screaming Grealish’s name.

Well there is always an exception which proves the rule, but let us look at the unique set of events which led to Grealish’s breakthrough. Firstly he went on loan to Notts County at 18 and played regular first team football giving him a good experience slogging out in a relegation battle in League 2. People claim this was it, this is what “made” Grealish into the player he become. No. It was part of his journey but nowhere near the main factor which benefited him. Jack still had to get past a stubborn Paul Lambert.

Over the next 6 months Grealish only started one game, an FA cup tie against Blackpool in a 4th round tie. Things only changed when Lambert was sacked and replaced with Tim Sherwood. This was the turning point for Grealish’s career.

Through all of Sherwood’s many, many faults there is one thing we can be eternally grateful, the gift of developing Jack Grealish. He persevered with Grealish. Fans criticised this, saying Grealish wasn’t ready and the midfielder struggled initially under Sherwood, but then came the FA Cup Semi-Final against Liverpool.  Emre Can and Martin Skrtel likely still have nightmares of him running towards them.

Grealish ran the show at Wembley in 2015 and people assume this was always going to be the case. It took Grealish a lot of games and confidence from a manager for him to become a starter as well as playing in a side with standout performers like Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph and Ron Vlaar. Without the settled side, and the trust shown by Sherwood, Grealish’s development would have been halted.

Consider this; Grealish is arguably the most exciting talent to come through the youth ranks since Gary Shaw and it still took him till he was 19 before he was given a chance at Villa.

If it took Grealish that long to be played and for that unique set of circumstances for him to flourish, what chance do other youngsters have?



MONEYBALL
Bringing through youth players brings so many advantages, such as not having to spend as heavily on recruiting players, as mentioned, but also the revenue transfer fees can potentially generate.

Villa have been financially unstable for a long time and youth players can help the club to be sustainable by generating income from loan fees, but even more lucratively, players can be sold for relatively large profits.

Chelsea make considerable income from their youth programme with 40 players currently out on loan (which Villa ironically have profited from this season with Abraham) who can then be either sold, like Patrick Bamford, who was sold for £9 million despite never playing for them.  Then there’s Nathan Ake, he was sold for £20 million despite having barely featured.  The Blues also received an offer of £35 million for Callum Hudson-Odoi [17], despite him having only playing 5 games for the club.

By comparison, Villa have never sold any player for more than £32.5 million; the total transfer fee received for Christian Benteke.

Last summer [2018] it seemed selling Grealish was going to be Villa’s only way of staving off administration, so clearly youth promotion brings a massive financial incentive, and when you consider the transfer market today this policy of ‘developing your own’ seems to have much more importance.

That however raises another issue, have we really got the best value for the players we have managed to move on?

Daniel Johnson went to Preston and been a solid championship player for them with almost 150 appearances. He was sold for a mere £50,000; that’s one week’s worth of Mile Jedinak’s wages.  Callum Robinson, also at Preston, was sold for £500,000 and is now a well regarded championship striker.  Jonathan Hogg, now a regular Premier League midfielder, has reached two play-off finals with two different clubs since being offloaded for £500,000.  All whilst we have spent millions on midfielders who have failed to do exactly that.

Whilst there’s no certainty that these players were good enough for Villa, we didn’t appear to recoup anywhere near their true value.



The expense of the youth team is excessive as well.

It is extremely expensive running a youth team, especially one which gives very little expenditure back.

Jordan Lyden is 23 and has been on a professional contract for 5 years. He is still on the books despite never playing more than 4 times and making just 10 appearances for Oldham  on loan [2018].  Yes, Lyden has had injuries problems, but maybe he should have been moved on by the club a long time ago to enable him to re-start his career elsewhere?  After-all, this will be the outcome in all probability at the end of the season when his contract ends, finally.

A lot has been made on the Jacob Bedeau deal to Scunthorpe on a free transfer.

Many criticise that Villa spent £1 million on a 17 year old, only for him to be released two years later. But this reflects the new approach at Villa towards youth. By the age of 19 it should be clear whether a youngster has the potential to go on to play for the club.  Bedeau never got a minute for the football club and was never even given the chance to go out on loan, despite Bury offering to do so only for Bruce to reject this deal.  This is an identical situation for Callum O’Hare last season, because it was felt he ‘might’ be used in the first team squad.

Now, two years later having zero minutes in the Aston Villa senior team, Bedeau is given a free transfer to Scunthorpe United. This does seem a change of tact for Villa.  Bedeau is still a teenager.  Maybe it boils down to three things; he asked to be released in order to resurrect his career, Scunthorpe only wanted a permanent deal, or most likely Dean Smith saw no purpose in retaining his services and simply decided to let him go.

“WONDER-KID”


How many times have we fans got ourselves excited about the supposed next ‘wonder-kid’ coming through?

Whether it be Luke or Stephen Moore, Nathan Delfouneso, Gary Gardner, Rushian Hepburn-Murphy and company – only to ultimately be disappointed.  Lately there is much talk about Jacob Ramsey, so hopefully with this new youth policy in place, he and other Villa youth players can be part of a new generation that finally achieve their potential at Aston Villa.

I stand by my long held view that Villa are the worst club in the country for developing their youth players.  Note I didn’t say “have the worst youth players”, because it seems that when it gets to the point where youth players are to be integrated into the first team, we hinder their development.

Fortunately, however, this seems to now be changing.  Thankfully we have appointed a Head Coach who will work with these youngsters.

Dean Smith will hopefully develop the youth, as shown by him including a number when he originally came in and his record at Brentford for developing academy players.  Smith has presumably decided some are not ready and now many have been sent on loan to gain experience rather than being left to waste away in the under-23s.

This approach has had a beneficial impact on Mitchell Clark who has impressed out on loan with Port Vale, after speaking of his disillusionment of being stuck in the under 23s despite feeling he was ready to play in the first team.

Callum O’Hare (Carlisle United), Harry McKirdy (Newport County), Corey Blackett-Taylor (Walsall), Jake Doyle-Hayes and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (Cambridge United) are all now going to gain experience in senior first team football.

There is at least a clear strategy now.

Pleasingly, we aren’t just loaning our youngsters to the first club that comes calling.  Callum O’Hare and Jake Doyle-Hayes reportedly had offers from League One clubs, but these deals didn’t guarantee them first team football.  Therefore, Villa instead opted to send them to League Two clubs where they are more likely to get a game.

This is now a distinctively different and positive attitude towards youth development.

Whilst these players aren’t yet deemed good enough to play for Aston Villa, it is the right decision to loan them out to get experience.

When they return, Smith has affirmed his intention to work with all the youngsters in pre-season with a view to preparing them for use in the league next season.

Give the youngsters time with these good, proven coaches who will give them consistent game time.

Play them in a team with solid foundations.

Only then, hopefully, will the next generation of Villa youngsters have the opportunity to live up to their potential and we can finally make the most of our academy./quote]

[Legion]

I am still firmly of the belief that Cameron Archer who has just turned 17 and scored the other night for the U23s will make it. Have done for years and years.

[Legion]

I do agree with the general overview though and know from first-hand experience that the coaching and selection at BMH is not all it is cracked up to be.

[Legion]

Do you have a link to the original article, please?

[old man villa fan]

Thanks for sharing that TV.  An interesting read.

I have always felt that you have to keep on stretching players during their development years, otherwise they tail off.  I believe that we have been looking short term from the days of MON with little thought to bringing through young players as a process.  This in part has been due to the pressure of maintaining our position in the PL but has also added to the tail spin the Club has been in for the past 10 years.  Sometimes, having more money than teams at your level can be a hinderance, rather than an advantage, if you use it in the wrong way.

[DesBremner]

No hunger in paradise
I recommend everyone reads/watches it
Statistically more chance of being struck by a meteorite than breaking through and playing top flight football
Having worked with academies and coached at various clubs the 'basic remit' was simple
In each age group there is 1 possibly 2 players that are considered to make the breakthrough
the rest are there to compliment / make up the numbers
Parents get sold the dream

[nuninho]

Do you have a link to the original article, please?

Original page is here Legion

http://villaunderground.com/spotlight-why-has-the-aston-villa-youth-academy-failed-for-so-long/

[Legion]

Thank you.

[PeterWithesShin]

Main reason is they haven't been good enough to play for us. Most of that article is just waffle and some is just plain incorrect. I do think we should be sending some of them out on loan earlier than we do, but who have we let go that would have made us better if they'd stayed at the time? Cahill and Albrighton is pretty much it. Nearly all the others we sold to the lower leagues where they've invariably stayed, players like Johnson only seem appealing now because we're down at their level but we weren't when we sold them. There's a reason Johnson (using him again as an example) has played so many second division games, it's because he's a second division player.

[SoccerHQ]

I wouldn't say it's failing although atm it's going through a dry spell and this is really the time when we need a crop of 3-4 top quality youngsters to come through given how poor our 11 is.

If in the academy now we had an 18 year old CB of standard of Gary Cahill, a winger as good as Albrighton was when he first broke through and a CM of Bannan or Steven Davis quality they'd all be starting for us.

When you look back last 15 years we've produced plenty of players who've played for their country, played many games in premier league for us or other clubs (two have played prominent roles in teams winning the league title) and others who haven't made the cut in prem but done well in championship/league 1 as PWS mentions above. So pretty similar to all premier league clubs in that period.

My main issue is we don't send them out on loan enough or when they're young enough. Spurs had Townsend and Kane out on loan at 17/18.

Our policy generally tends to be give them debuts at 18, keep them around for first team/under 23s for 18 months and then if their performances have flatlined or they're simply not playing eventually send them out on loan at 20 or 21.

We did this in the past with the Fonz and seem to be repeating the same errors with likes of RHM and O'Hare. Why didn't they go out on loan at any stage of last season? Steve Bruce was never going to throw them into the 11 in a play off game for example so poor excuse to me just to keep them around in case we get some injuries.

If O'Hare and RHM had gone out last year to league 1/2 and done well then obviously they'd be more ready to have a go at championship level considering how poor we are in attacking areas. Imagine O'Hare having more senior games under his belt and being ready to have a run of games when Jack got injured? Instead DS understandbly dosen't really know how effective he'd be with so little game time so decides he needs games at lower level first.

Think another problem we seem to have as a club is after 2002 Youth cup final we seem to have this idea our young kids must be total worldbeaters (remember the hype that the Moore Brothers were going to be as good as Rooney?). If they're not they get sold and then we spend decent money on getting in players on high wages who are no better.

Obviously selling Cahill and signing Davies and Zat Knight, Davis with Sidwell coming in and Albrighton out and being laughably replaced by some apparent footballer called Tonev are examples of this.

Even Gary Gardner has shown at 3-4 clubs at this level now he's a solid enough championship midfielder. Don't know why he can never replicate that form for us, whether he feels more pressure or not and so can't do the basics well enough who can say.

Policy needs to be bringing in 3-4 a season into the 18. If three are no frills solid players who can do a job at whatever level we're playing and we then have one potential superstar like Grealish that's a pretty good ratio for me.

[dave.woodhall]

Policy needs to be bringing in 3-4 a season into the 18. If three are no frills solid players who can do a job at whatever level we're playing and we then have one potential superstar like Grealish that's a pretty good ratio for me.

If you can bring that many through regularly you'll have the best youth policy in history.

[SoccerHQ]

Policy needs to be bringing in 3-4 a season into the 18. If three are no frills solid players who can do a job at whatever level we're playing and we then have one potential superstar like Grealish that's a pretty good ratio for me.

If you can bring that many through regularly you'll have the best youth policy in history.

Really? Mitch Clark a few games at left back, Green playing out wide and Jack and O'Hare behind striker was pretty realistic for this season but hasn't happened for a few reasons.

Should happen next year.

[dave.woodhall]

Policy needs to be bringing in 3-4 a season into the 18. If three are no frills solid players who can do a job at whatever level we're playing and we then have one potential superstar like Grealish that's a pretty good ratio for me.

If you can bring that many through regularly you'll have the best youth policy in history.

Really? Mitch Clark a few games at left back, Green playing out wide and Jack and O'Hare behind striker was pretty realistic for this season but hasn't happened for a few reasons.

Should happen next year.

I don't know if it's changed in recent years but it was always reckoned that two who make it at the level you're playing at in a two year cycle is doing well. 

[Toronto Villa]

Do you have a link to the original article, please?

Original page is here Legion

http://villaunderground.com/spotlight-why-has-the-aston-villa-youth-academy-failed-for-so-long/

Thanks. Sorry was offline for a bit. Should have posted the link

[PeterWithesShin]

I read it as SHQ saying we should have 3-4 new young players breaking into the squad each season, not including the likes of Jack in with them.