I'm sure competitive parents have a lot to do with it. Much more impressive to tell friends your son is on the books at MU academy, than on the books and maybe the first team bench at little ole' Watford. He would have been a first team star for us in 3 years time and could have joined a huge club in the first team squad at the age of 21/22. Instead he will probably be joining a champ/league one side on loan from MU at that stage with 12 carabao Cup performances under his belt, craving first team experience. We only got to keep Ashley Young because he was pretty unimpressive at the same age.
We've given plenty of game time to 18 year-old JP and Asprilla - if the player is good enough, which Amass seems to be, they'd get the minutes here. But instead of playing regularly here in the Championship, he can get coached by Utd for a few years before being sent on loan to play regularly at another Championship club anyway - all the while likely earning maybe 5 times more than he would have been if here.
Pretty much the only chances Watford have of keeping a top prospect is if they're either a late bloomer or they're Watford fans.
Exactly. Most other clubsproduces first team players except us. Sure the dice are loaded but our fans just wail and use it as a comfort blanket when other teams gets it done. The reason our players never stay or develop is the same reason Sarr and Pedro stagnate. The putrid smell of Pozzo and his cronies polluting the environment with their chaotic brand of incompetence.
Heads do get turned unfortunately. Maybe some feel they won’t get a chance here anyway but then he probably won’t at Man U either .
I know of a 16 year old signed for but not played in the first team of a second division club, 2 years ago Man U, offered his club a reputed 6 figure sum he went and looked round but thought that he was expected to sign because they wanted him to, and he would be just a number, so signed for another P.L. Club with facilities as good as Man U in the midlands beginning with L. Not all youngsters who can sign for Man U do so!
But the opposite way of coming at that is to see JP and Asprilla as part of the problem, not evidence in support. They contribute to the pathway to the first team being blocked because Gino would rather develop sexy South Americans with an eye to future player trading than leave room for homegrown talent to come through. And then pays lip service to fulfilling the mandatory homegrown quotas in our squads with decrepit players like Cleverley, Foster and pals.
Sorry, not sure I understand this? You'd rather watch a much worse player than JP, just because they're from St Albans? And of course any academy player who is good enough for our level but someone slipped through the net of the big boys, would also be a future player trade, same as any other club of our size.
Again, nonsense - firstly, neither of them play Left-Back. When have we ever signed a young South American defender for Watford?! There is nothing to show that players like Amass and Galvez would have had their paths blocked. Second, having an academy player you've acquired for free then can sell for £30mil is more profitable than having to sign a player for £10mil to maybe sell for £30mil. Homegrown players also are more likely to command a premium on the sale. If we had a potential star in the academy then it would make zero financial sense from a "future player trading" perspective to blow lots more money to sign someone else ahead of them!?! The simple fact is any of the players we've had who could potentially ever command such fees get nicked before we even have a chance to give them a minute in the first team.
In a year or two we’ll have dropped to a level where our average youth prospects, who are of no interest to the big clubs, can walk into our first team. The dawning of a new era of Hodsons, Fiskens, Hands, Sheppards, Norvilles, and repeated choruses of “one of our own”. Happy days.
And people will probably say they enjoyed that more than what we have now as they “tried and and cared”
Sure well done, that's one 7 years ago who never even kicked a ball for us. I'm sure Amass would have been really worried about having his progress blocked by him.
Pointing out they don't play left back misses the point somewhat. I'm talking about the message it sends overall to the youth ranks about the ethos of the club and the model the owner prefers etc when I'm talking about pathways being blocked, not that there's literally players being brought in for their specific position. And frankly the position a 15yo plays now sometimes bears little relation to the position they end up establishing themselves in as a professional, so they (and their parents / representatives) would probably be looking at it in a wider sense anyway. And while I agree with your second point, going by the last decade there's zero evidence Gino does and plenty to suggest he doesn't.
I think the key question here is how many cases are there of talented English youth players for Watford "having their paths blocked", finally managing to escape, and have then gone on to achieve bigger and better things elsewhere, or in 95% of cases, even a professional career elsewhere ? The reason that none of our youngsters make the grade is none of them are good enough to play for a top end champ/prem side, once the cream has been siphoned off. Pre-Pozzo I'm sure one or two would have made the side, like Hodson etc did in the past.
You're contradicting yourself a bit here - either you claim Gino is most interested in "future player trading" or he isn't - and if he was then it's self-evidently more profitable to sell a player you've effectively been able to acquire for free through your academy (and that come with the added 'English tax') than one you had to purchase from South America. As per undeniable truth's comment above, who are these mythical talented English youth players whose pathways we've supposedly blocked in recent years?! Amass is very much principally a LB. He's not one of the rare flying full-backs like Bale who later become a winger for instance. And regardless, even if his representatives were looking at things in "a wider sense", they would also still see that we're currently regularly having to play mediocre young homegrown players like Morris and Ngakia anyway - so if they don't think he can at least match if not exceed their ability in order to play for the first-team here then they can't rate their ability that highly.
Whose path have we blocked? Folivi? Dalby? Lo-Everton? The list of promising-against-kids players goes on, but when it comes down to it, none of them have proven us wrong. Even the absolute best that remain with us until 18 are non-league level players, maybe a couple of seasons at League 1/2. The exception being O'Nien, and even he has taken half a decade of League 1 football while we were in the PL. Any player capable of making an impact at the level we've been at for the last decade, will have been flagged up to bigger clubs with more money, more pull, and better facilities, long before we realistically could have given first team opportunities to these kids. And even in this case a place on the bench at 15 wasn't enough.
I don't think us signing players has a great deal to do with it. All clubs sign players because sometimes you need players for the here and now and it's up to the youngsters to work their way in to the managers thinking and then grasp opportunities when they come. This lad was put on then bench in the first team at 15 which suggested we thought he was good enough. He surely didn't expect to be in the squad every game after that. Boys of 15/16 very rarely play first team football and unless this kid is the next Ashley Cole he will play less first team football at United than he probably would have here. These clubs sign players like this because they can and they think their name is good enough to tempt them which probably is the case more often than not
Saw this on the 606 site - apparently whether we offered wasn’t good enough. “Steven Amass (his grandfather) wrote the following comments under an article in the Watford Observer in February. Harry Amass might still have been tempted by the lure of a glamorous club such as Manchester Utd. and by their academy facilities, but these comments do make me wonder whether he might have been persuaded to stay if he had been offered more money because he would probably have broken into Watford's first team in the near future” "He (Harry Amass) started in the academy at 9 years of age and now plays very much Watford u18s. He was also on the bench for 1st team against Reading. All coaches at Watford have developed Harry Amass, who's stlll 15yrs old, into a very exciting player with a fantastic future ahead of him." “Harry got his scholarship a year in advance. He's also been offered a 2 year pro contract. Unfortunately the wages are not impressive, not much more than scholarship wages which he doesn’t get till he's 16. He's attracting much interest from big Premier league clubs. My heart will always be with Watford and so will Harry's but as Watford say he is their star academy player they don't appreciate him so much when it come to salary. Harry didn't sign and we know what clubs are interested and Watford never provide information to Harry, his mum Gemma or me. If the right offer, club and pathway is put on the table then Harry and his mum will make the decision - they get the last say.”
The problem is these cradle snatchers can offer far more than anything we can. We should have done better in this regard (eh Gino ?) but who knows even then that might not have been enough. We hear all this nonsense all the time. Our heart is with the club most famous example that ***** Young but really they are mercenaries. Hope he enjoys his time floundering at Manure before ending back in the Chump on loan somewhere.
Indeed, even had we somehow been able to match what Utd were offering he'd have probably left anyway.
Leicester are a club that are well established in the PL (and were 5th in the league 2 years ago when that occurred!) with a much larger budget than ours - it's not comparable to us at all.
What is really sickening as Jumbo says is that Pozzo's complete ignorance at running a club means that we could have had enormous depth at LB. Estupinan (it won't be a surprise when BHA get the usual vultures circling around him), Galvez and Amass. Just what we want. You sell the first in line generate a nice profit and have a ready made replacement. Not only thanks to the PL, FA and donkeyface Gareth do we miss out on the transfer fee but also not having to sign someone. The whole process for all clubs especially those down the pyramid is a disgrace. Clubs that once in a while might turn out a future star and survive on that for a few seasons can no longer do so. Manure already have several left backs vying for that spot. But like the other vultures are happy to stockpile. UEFA or FIFA need to step in to prevent this stockpiling which is all done for the benefit of those few ESL mobsters. They then also profit because they usually sell those players trademarked in a way as ESL starlet for a nice profit. We get bugger all out of it.
Something pitiful. All arranged by threat from the ESL clubs and those that caved in from below with threats of finances being cut off. That's the pitiful monies that trickle down the pyramid. Amass if he had developed here and broken into the first team say aged 18 and played well. You know the drill his transfer value for his potential would earn the club a few millions especially as fullbacks are one of the most important positions in the modern game. We've been shafted. Personally and it sounds mean I hope he ends up in obscurity along with Galvez and the rest.
I wasn’t comparing Leicester with us, I was trying to point out that Man U think they have a right to the best talent but don’t always get it!
Blake is 18 in the summer so who can blame him. We've had ineffective dross in and around the team all season and he hasn't had a sniff. And then we bring in the joke that is Assombalonga when we realise Manaj and Bayo are utterly dreadful. I'll say it again, if I were a young player our chaotic shambolic club is the last place I would want to develop.
Did you watch Blake's appearances vs Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup and Reading in the FA Cup? The kid has promise but on that evidence he's not yet ready to make much of an impact on the first team. He'll likely need until next season. Blake is a winger, he is not a CF, so Assombalonga is not relevant to him.
