Aston, I do have a great sense of humour but taking Timmy's point about the game having more skilful players as a result of erm, coaching...I will disagree with that until the cows come home as they are not in anyway more skilful than the likes of Greaves, Best and Charlton and many many players I have seen at Gresty Road and yes its boring to some to hark on about the past and maybe its just an age thing when we think of the best and forget the worst etc but I can see Greaves now dancing through defences and Jimmy White placing the ball in the top corner and I would argue that packed defences lead to poor quality of matches, less skill as they either mispass the ball or hoof it up the pitch and how many times do we see players doing what those great players of yesteryear did? Messi is on a par with them. No Crewe player has scored more hat tricks than Lord and that must tell us something that is not done at all today very often no matter what league they are in. I don't think I have seen much 'skill at all at Gresty Road these last few years tbh.
Coaching or as I prefer the term developing takes place naturally as I explained, I was a better player at 21 than 18 and better at 18 than 15...nowt to do with coaching..
Developing natural talent is quite easy as its just down to recognising that at around age 16 plus and the opportunity and our academy makes the point really. No other lower league club has our level apart from a couple...48 clubs and just two or three prefer to spend a million pounds a year and most are more successful than we are and I would suggest that continuing with our model will not achieve much success nowadays as the players in the lower leagues are fit and strong and few academy graduates can cope until they have had two or three seasons at this level and developing their bodies in the meantime...
Coaching 8 year old is nonsense and always will be...Not just that, if they are really really good, then some other club will come in way before we get the benefit and we haven't even touched on the prima donnas who refuse to sign contracts is another nail in the coffin don't you think?
BTW, I accept us seniors get to pay 17 quid for a match and ST's lower that but you know even with inflation the costs are way about what they were and when you compare what was on offer then, to what is on offer now, probably a fiver is about right....
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