Youth, and our struggles with it.

[Peachy]

Good subject to tackle Birdman.

Seems to me we struggle to take promising 16_17 year olds, and realise their potential.

And this failure is a factor when good young players have to decide whether to stay at the club or move away.

No one has ever given me a satisfactory explanation why Ferguson was so eager to get away. I'm not sure I buy the money explanation,  I don't think our offer would have been that far from the one he got from Palace.

And I do think we need to be brave in giving a chance to younger players.

People say they will make mistakes and cost points  but that can happen anyway. 

I remember Reading away under Clarke . Two up, and we made a sub, had a choice between Rosenberg and Nabi. Logic dictated bringer the former on because there was less a risk we would blow the lead  so that's what we did.  We blew the lead anyway.

Not suggesting history would have been different if we had brought on Nabi, but it does bring into question the idea that giving young players a chance will harm results.

Apparently we offered him more money which together with the fee of £11(13? )m agreed 5 months previously are the two key points of our case. 

Absolutely disgraceful how long this is taking. Covid is absolutely no excuse.

I just think with Ferguson it all came very quickly to him and he grasped the opportunity to go and play premier league football straight away in favour of risking it getting promoted with us. We were doing well at the time but it wasnt a given we'd go up and we proved that by squeaking over the line come May.

If we offered more money and he still went that actually makes me feel better about losing him. The kid probably thought he might never get the chance again so jumped at it. 

It is disgraceful howver that we are still waiting payment. Covid has fuck all to do with it. They can do any meetings over Zoom or teams etc.

We are in a strong position imo. My worry for the delay is that Palace have cooled on him because of his injury but that shouldn't even come into it. They signed him in good faith.

[Birdman1811]

I would say its easier for some clubs to give yoof a chance when they have less to lose. Man City or Chelsea have the freedom to bring on 18 yr olds when they're winning 3-0 against the likes of us. Clubs who are reasonably safe from relegation but not threatening to win anything can do so as well, because why not.

Clubs like us, who are either desperately fighting relegation or desperate to go up - have a much smaller margin of error and less leeway for bringing on Youth because the consequences (for the manager) are much higher. A manager expected to finish anywhere from 7-17th doesn't have too much to worry about in the grand scheme of things. 

If our direction as a club continues on its current path then I think we'll be seeing a lot more youth in the first team given that we'll be a skint mid-table championship make-up-the-numbers club praying for our next Megson.

Definately some truth in this.

We can't then complain kids want to move on, or we don't develop any though if short term results are all that matters, and I'm not saying they shouldn't.

It is very much a pick one choice.

[MrFizz]

Another thing here is the 3-subs rule. Reverting to 5 may enable more teams to give yoof a chance. If you're 3-0 up with 20 to go, and 2 subs left to make, why not chuck on that young striker or winger. With only 3 subs managers have less chance of doing this.

[Spandaubaggie]

It’s a vicious circle. Like in all professions, people that are new and inexperienced at what they are being asked to do will make more mistakes than those who’ve done it for years. They might also have the potential to do far more than the older heads but in order to realise that potential they have to be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. I’d say that is hard for a couple of reasons:-
1. High profile nature of this particular “industry” and the likelihood of a Manager losing his job quite quickly if too many mistakes are made across the board. Therefore - minimise the risk of those mistakes happening by not playing those most likely to make them.
2. The frankly pathetic nature of a significant minority of football supporters. The Albion no worse or better in this regard but they annoy me more than others because I witness them acting like utter morons. I’ve spoken about the frankly ludicrous levels of anger boiling close to the surface in lots of football supporters and it never really needs much of an excuse to come exploding to the surface. They might initially cut a youngster some slack but in my opinion this margin of error doesn’t last long enough to accommodate for the period of time when that player is learning his trade - and therefore making more mistakes.

It didn’t take very long before prospects like Leko and Harper were suddenly being dismissed as “lazy” having a “bad attitude” and lacking “football intelligence”. I have my own views on why some of those particular criticisms were levelled at the two lads I mentioned. I’m sure you can work it out.

Final point - despite all I’ve said above there is always the chance that the youngsters just aren’t good enough at that particular time. Bit like football managers really. Sometimes it just happens for a certain player at a certain club for sometimes quite hard to define reasons.

Very good post UCE and I was especially disappointed with how Harper fell away.

We're a club that seem to always have pivotal seasons either trying to stay up or fighting to go up. It makes managers much more on the edge than at say a mid table champ club or mid table Prem.

This added pressure makes it harder to blood promising youngsters.