U-18/U-21/Loans/Development Squad (2011-2018)

[Nutter-Naylor]

U18s: GOAL! Daly cuts it back on the right and Sterling slots past the @Woolwich keeper to double our lead. 0-2, 7mins

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

 

[Nutter-Naylor]

U18s: GOAL! Great passing move splits Gunners open as Stylianides finds Sterling and he plays in Edwards to coolly slot home. 1-3, 24mins

 

[Nutter-Naylor]

U18s: @Woolwich respond once more as Brown trips Nelson and the latter slots home the resulting penalty. 2-3, 27mins

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

COME ON BOYS!!!

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

Fuck it.

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

 

[NorseYid]

That went well

 

[HeroesAndVillains]

 

[bus-conductor]

WindyCOYS
Windy, have you heard anything about the Veljkovic situation. Rumour is that he's refusing to sign a new deal and is getting the Ceballos treatment.

I've also heard that you have said you think Pochettino doesn't rate him. Could this be why Veljkovic isn't signing a contract ?

After losing Azzaoui it would be really disappointing to lose Veljkovic who, IMO, should have been given a chance to play in CM this season.

 

[Totti]

Is Veljkovic the most overrated youngster we've had in ages or what? Couldn't even get a game at Middlesbrough. Seemed to find a good level at Charlton before getting injured. Can't even get in our squads when we have injuries etc.

 

[WindyCOYS]

WindyCOYS
Windy, have you heard anything about the Veljkovic situation. Rumour is that he's refusing to sign a new deal and is getting the Ceballos treatment.

I've also heard that you have said you think Pochettino doesn't rate him. Could this be why Veljkovic isn't signing a contract ?

After losing Azzaoui it would be really disappointing to lose Veljkovic who, IMO, should have been given a chance to play in CM this season.

Hello mate. I've heard a few things but I'm not sure how much credence I can give to what I've heard as the person said that Amos and Carter-Vickers were both on stand-by for Qarabag (ahead of Veljkovic), and neither is listed on the Europa League website as being on List B yet... so either they were on stand-by but not registered, or there's some confusion.

 

[bus-conductor]

Hello mate. I've heard a few things but I'm not sure how much credence I can give to what I've heard as the person said that Amos and Carter-Vickers were both on stand-by for Qarabag (ahead of Veljkovic), and neither is listed on the Europa League website as being on List B yet... so either they were on stand-by but not registered, or there's some confusion.

Do Amos and CCV have to be listed though ? I thought if a young player was under a certain age and domiciled with the club a certain time there wasn't the requirement to list them, have I got that wrong ?

 

[bus-conductor]

WindyCOYS

Not sure if you've come across this guy (Samual King), he posts infrequently on SC (as KingSRV), he's a chelsea fan but is one of the most knowledgeable on youth football in general and writes really informative and well articulated stuff:

here's a link to something he wrote for a youthhawk football blog:

The Problems and Promises of Modern English Youth Football: A Deconstruction

It's a really well written piece about the problem with the current youth system and how the likes of Chelsea are stockpiling the best young talent. He's very critical of the, despite being a Chelsea fan.

 

[lovetheshirt]

WindyCOYS
here's a link to something he wrote for a youthhawk football blog:

The Problems and Promises of Modern English Youth Football: A Deconstruction

It's a really well written piece about the problem with the current youth system and how the likes of Chelsea are stockpiling the best young talent. He's very critical of the, despite being a Chelsea fan.

That's a good piece, thanks. It's definitely a problem (in effect FFP is incentivising 'backdoor' financial doping through the academies). The irony is the incentives were / are there to encourage academies to provide top class facilities for local talent.

It seems to me Chelsea are just using it as a cash cow. Solanke and Brown, what chance have they got when Jose's chosen 'one' can't even keep a place on the bench.

 

[bus-conductor]

That's a good piece, thanks. It's definitely a problem (in effect FFP is incentivising 'backdoor' financial doping through the academies). The irony is the incentives were / are there to encourage academies to provide top class facilities for local talent.

It seems to me Chelsea are just using it as a cash cow. Solanke and Brown, what chance have they got when Jose's chosen 'one' can't even keep a place on the bench.

To be fair to Chelsea, they are just playing the system. Investment in youth development is deducted from FFP accounting, and it serves various other purposes. They prevent others from unearthing a gem. They can loans these kids out and if they are good they get to play against everyone but Chelsea. If the kids they produce are half decent they'll produce revenue (especially if they qualify as home grown), if they get the odd wonder kid he'll produce team gain and/or big revenue.

And the pressure that their managers are under, to constantly compete to win everything they enter means managers are much less likely to want to risk inexperienced teenagers.

There is the current threat of legal action against FIFA/UEFA by EU based football lobby group to scrap transfer fees entirely, included in their proposed litigation is the scrapping of the loan system too. This would severely hamper the stock piling of players.

 

[WindyCOYS]

WindyCOYS

Not sure if you've come across this guy (Samual King), he posts infrequently on SC (as KingSRV), he's a chelsea fan but is one of the most knowledgeable on youth football in general and writes really informative and well articulated stuff:

here's a link to something he wrote for a youthhawk football blog:

The Problems and Promises of Modern English Youth Football: A Deconstruction

It's a really well written piece about the problem with the current youth system and how the likes of Chelsea are stockpiling the best young talent. He's very critical of the, despite being a Chelsea fan.

Thanks for this mate. I follow him on Twitter, he writes very intelligently! Such a knowledgable guy, he must spend a lot of time researching and watching youth football.

 

[bus-conductor]

Thanks for this mate. I follow him on Twitter, he writes very intelligently! Such a knowledgable guy, he must spend a lot of time researching and watching youth football.

I'm pretty sure he's told us he was a young pro but his career was cut short by illness. I'm not sure in what capacity but, but he's been watching youth football for the last 5 years.

This was his first post on SC:

Hi I'm new here (and a Chelsea fan, though I'm predominantly neutral when it comes to youth football, and a massive fan of your academy, which is how I ended up on this board, silently observing for the last year or so).

One of the things about this board is that is fairly insular and having been round the country watching youth football for the last five years or so I'd thought I'd widen the context to give you a better view of where your academy stands in comparison to everyone else. Particularly, considering the upcoming FAYC tie, your south west London neighbours.

I first attended a Chelsea reserve game as a twelve year old in 2004 and was appalled by the standard. I had a youthful idea that between the ages of 18 and 21 some enormous improvement would take place and they would blossom into premier league footballers. It was informative to watch them disappear below conference level, retire, and a few end up in lowly Scandinavian leagues. The poor quality I'd observed then made sense. The matches I'd seen had looked like sub-conference football. (Incidentally a number of that period's players are now progressive coaches, such as McKenna and Chelsea's U18 manager Joe Edwards. Both of whom at 28 are the countries youngest tier 1 youth team managers.)

Ten years later I cannot believe how good academy football currently is and the full story, of which Tottenham is a part, is too complicated to cover here. It takes in the FA youth development, under Trevor Brooking, which prioritised the ages of 5-11, the thinkers of that period employed at the FA (including Terry McDermott) the rise of young innovators slowly pushing out the old boys in academies, the predominance of Spanish, Dutch, German, and Belgian youth development showing the way forward and accelerating the innovators advancement, and finally the club's internal stories. Since 2005 elite youth football has undergone a revolution in talent ID, coaching, infrastructure, and culture. The two main clubs who haven't progressed at such a startling rate were both youth football powers in 2005: Woolwich and Man U. While the latter are still generally strong, although far surpassed by their neighbours, and the former desperately trying to make up lost ground having realised too late they were being left behind, both are significantly behind the modernism of youth football's big three.

EPPP classifies academies over all areas from facilities to general welfare provision but if you were to take the three most important criteria: the quality of talent ID, players and coaches across all age groups; you would get three academies who stand out far above the rest: Chelsea; Tottenham; and City. I saw people saying the difference between Woolwich and Tottenham is the facilities, but they are only a symbol of Tottenham's attitude towards youth development. Facilities mean nothing compared to what goes on inside them.

Over the last decade elite youth coaching in this country has divided into the new school and the old, with the new spectacularly winning. Its culture emphasises intelligence, understanding of psychology, the importance of education and above all the focus on developing technique and character with the understanding this will lead to success in the long term, even if the smaller less physical, but more talented, boys are not able to win everything in junior groups. This is something that for ages has been antithetical to English football. Simultaneously in talent ID the focus has moved from early physical developers (who win youth football matches) to skilful late developers (who win senior football matches) to the extent Tottenham now effectively reject boys who are too big by telling scouts to prioritise on smaller boys. Just as Chelsea do. This also comes with an understanding that just because a boy is tiny or average compared to his peers aged eight doesn't mean he won't grow to be 6'4' like Ruben Loftus-Cheek while still retaining their technique.

In Woolwich's case they have become outdated because Brady wouldn't remove the coaches and scouts who were once regarded as the best but whose methods didn't advance. He couldn't bring himself to be disloyal to them having been made so successful by them. They haven't got worse, they've stayed the same (which of course, when everyone else is improving, is equivalent to getting worse.) They have some excellent internally produced players such as Chris Willock and Reiss Nelson (U15) but these came about more from the advance of grass roots football beneath them than any improvements on their behalf. It may be strange to hear but in many cases Tottenham's facilities were not decisive in swinging a boy's decision to come to Spurs over Woolwich, as they hadn't even been to Woolwich, whose scouts saw and overlooked them.

Talent ID is not as simple as it appears, spotting talent aged eight, is much harder than when they are twenty eight and everyone on the pitch has physically matured. Equally challenging is the age old problem of the academic year group, 75% of youth players above the age of sixteen were born between September and December, why? Because when they were scouted they were between 8-15% older and more advanced than their peers born in August so naturally they looked better than them. When they are seven or eight, that gap is the same as pitting your U14's against your U16's. This is a problem which still persists but it is noticeable Tottenham were one of the first in realising it and you now have one of the most widely spread age ranges, so you're not limiting yourselves to 33% of the talent pool. For example even if clubs had been focused on small technical boys fifteen years ago they would have missed KWP (July births are still very rare.).

I could go on and on about the changes but that's enough for an overview. Sufficient to say Tottenham are right at the forefront of improvements.

Now to Chelsea. 2005 is an important year for them because it was when Abramovich's demands for a successful youth policy were formulated by the newly appointed head of academy Neil Bath. All the contracted age groups from reserves down were formed of players, apart from a few notable exceptions, who weren't good enough. To make up for this at U18 level massive recruitment from abroad was instituted to raise the standard. For this Frank Arnesen was chosen at geriatric Dutch super scout, and Abramovich advisor, Piet De Visser's behest. The most successful of Arnesen's signings were Fabio Borini, Gael Kakuta, Patrick Van Aanholt, Gokhan Tore, Miroslav Stoch and Jeffrey Bruma, all of whom failed to become Chelsea regulars but are now playing in top tier European leagues (if you use the Harry Redknapp definition of top, ie a few are not playing in top top top leagues, such as Stoch who is on loan from Fenerbahce to Al Ain, who play in a bottom bottom top league.)

Far more rewarding for Chelsea was the focus placed on the young age groups from which the team on Thursday has largely been reaped and means that Chelsea's reputation for producing foreign youth teams is slowly lessening. This was where the real hope was placed ten years ago and the standard of the youngsters at U18 level is the highest it ever has been. Chelsea have never judged their performance on the league table since the league side changes from week to week, but the FAYC. In the last three years their worst result has been the semi finals in 2011, where they lost against the Pogba, Morrison, Lingard, Will and Michael Keane, Man U side. They've reached four finals in five years and only lost one of those. This hasn't been done since the Busby babes.

The trouble is no player has gone on to the first team despite a few who have merited the chance. This is not an issue confined to Chelsea as those who until recently have lamented Tottenham's failure to realise the un-glistening riches in the youth teams shadows that begin to sparkle when exposed to light, can attest. It is for that reason Pochettino is one of my favourite manager's right now. At last one of the big three academies has a manager who will trust its produce.

While my fondness for Poch isn't completely disinterested as I forlornly hope Chelsea may be encouraged by his success, my main focus is that talented people are being allowed to fulfil their gifts.

The famous Michelangelo quote is that every block of stone has a sculpture inside it and it is the sculptor's task to find it. The task of dealing with youngster's of immense potential is similar.

For too long English youth development has been wantonly smashing up pieces of stone then wondering why so few of them turn into perfectly crafted sculptures, before finally deciding it was because there are only a few pieces of very special stone that when smashed become elegantly arranged, rather than finding their regressive treatment of the materials to be at fault.

The fact is of those born between 1982-92 there were somewhere between 5-20 boys who had Marcus Edwards' level of talent and 20-40 of Josh Onomah's but they were not allowed to fulfil it because of the backwards system it was filtered through. Considering the financial fortunes swilling around in clubs at the time, to me that is a crime against human talent, that there are people who have that talent in them but will never be able to fulfil it, not because of their own failings, but that of a system designed to extract it from them. That still infuriates me, because that, to me, is the greatest abandonment of the community these clubs were originally set up to serve. That fulfilment of their own members potential should be their greatest priority (not to mention Barcelona, Munich, and Ajax have proved it's the only way to build a truly great football team).

He really knows his shit.

 

[Cripps14]

Interesting read. Love this paragraph:

"For too long English youth development has been wantonly smashing up pieces of stone then wondering why so few of them turn into perfectly crafted sculptures, before finally deciding it was because there are only a few pieces of very special stone that when smashed become elegantly arranged, rather than finding their regressive treatment of the materials to be at fault."