A 20 year old who didn’t get offered a new contract playing for an u23 team? The sort of signing we needed and expected
You sort of need to sign U23 players or they tend to grow up and you don’t have a U23 team anymore. It’s unlikely he will be good enough if released, but it’s not unknown.
I never really understand our policy of hiring loads of 19-20 year olds who have been released by other academies.
If you hoover up enough of them, one or two may turn out to be decent. The fact that’s never happened yet, has not deterred the approach. It does make sense as this type of player is going to be cheap, so the risk to reward is going to always in our favour. The only issue I have is when we actually have to play them in the first team. The players we’ve used so far are the cream of the crop and have been massively short of the required standard even against League Two opponents. The gap between our U23 and professional league football is too wide to bridge.
I'm pretty sure they're just bodies. The club don't put much value U23 football - they're not alone in that - but then don't seem to develop enough younger players to fill the team. There are probably occasions where we want to put a senior player or two into an U23 game for injury rehabilitation or give an U18 a chance to step up. But to do that we need cannon fodder to fill the rest of the XI. And that's where the likes of Stevenson and Statham come in.
Jamie Vardy was released at 16. We nearly let Ashley Young go at older age than that. Looking for talent that way is like sifting for gold, so the main purpose is to run a team. But even if we produced a player to sell for 50k to a League Two team, that's the equivalent of selling a lot of shirts or pints. It's all income.
Exactly this. Say we want to develop a decent striker. We'd want to ensure that they practised runs to get on the end of crosses/ through balls, so you need semi-decent midfielders behind them. That doesn't mean we need a player who will make it with us, but at least one who can give them good enough opportunities to attempt something. Matches also should be competitive to get the most out of them, so playing a striker at right back and conceding 5 goals every match down that side won't do anyone any favours. Not in our team anyway.
More likely Brian, the not very good Spurs defender. Derek, the excellent West Brom left back, was white, which Brian wasn't, so it should be easy to tell Max's parentage.
More likely Brian, the not very good Spurs defender. Derek, the excellent West Brom left back, was white, which Brian wasn't, so it should be easy to tell Max's parentage.
