Ryan Sessegnon & David Brooks and Clubs Youth Policies

Watching the Fulham game last night and admiring the ability of their young superstar Ryan Sessegnon and wondered why The Blades seem to protect their prodigious talented young players when other Clubs seem to follow the mantra if you are good enough you’re old enough ?

Just quickly comparing Sessegnon and Brooks ( and yes I’m aware he’s missed the last couple of months with Glandular Fever ) their paths seem totally different.

David Brooks is 20 now and over the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons he’s made just 11 League appearances for us and scored 2 goals.

Sessegnon at Fulham is still only 17 years old ( so you’d imagine he’d need more protecting than a 20 year old ) and over the same 2016/17 and 2017/18 season he’s played 57 league matches, scoring 17 goals and assisting many others.

There are other cases too like Dominic Calvert-Lewin who is now 20 years old and as an 18 year old we only used him only 11 times in the league between 2014 & 2017, then sell him to Everton for £1.5m.

Almost immediately he’s part of The England U20 World Cup Winning Team, scores in the final and Everton play him in Premiership matches 36 times in one and a half seasons.

Just wondered others thoughts about why we don’t get the talented youth into our ranks earlier ?

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Originally Posted by Game_of_thow~ins

Watching the Fulham game last night and admiring the ability of their young superstar Ryan Sessegnon and wondered why The Blades seem to protect their prodigious talented young players when other Clubs seem to follow the mantra if you are good enough you’re old enough ?

Just quickly comparing Sessegnon and Brooks ( and yes I’m aware he’s missed the last couple of months with Glandular Fever ) their paths seem totally different.

David Brooks is 20 now and over the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons he’s made just 11 League appearances for us and scored 2 goals.

Sessegnon at Fulham is still only 17 years old ( so you’d imagine he’d need more protecting than a 20 year old ) and over the same 2016/17 and 2017/18 season he’s played 57 league matches, scoring 17 goals and assisting many others.

There are other cases too like Dominic Calvert-Lewin who is now 20 years old and as an 18 year old we only used him only 11 times in the league between 2014 & 2017, then sell him to Everton for £1.5m.

Almost immediately he’s part of The England U20 World Cup Winning Team, scores in the final and Everton play him in Premiership matches 36 times in one and a half seasons.

Just wondered others thoughts about why we don’t get the talented youth into our ranks earlier ?

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Sessegnon is a real talent, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a Fulham supporter and he raves about this young lad.
He is obviously way ahead of our David Brooks and he is not the only talented youngster around.
But I do take your point and agree with you that we should be playing young talent not being overly protective of them.

But remember, other clubs prodigious young talents never seem to get Glandular fever.

Seriously though, there are probably a hundred like Sessignon in Spain and France, over the next 10 years they will find their way into various Championship clubs and either get their clubs promoted or get sold for £25 million to a Prem club.
We'll miss out on all of them of course because you can't trust these foreigners can you

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Game_of_thow~ins

Watching the Fulham game last night and admiring the ability of their young superstar Ryan Sessegnon and wondered why The Blades seem to protect their prodigious talented young players when other Clubs seem to follow the mantra if you are good enough you’re old enough ?

Just quickly comparing Sessegnon and Brooks ( and yes I’m aware he’s missed the last couple of months with Glandular Fever ) their paths seem totally different.

David Brooks is 20 now and over the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons he’s made just 11 League appearances for us and scored 2 goals.

Sessegnon at Fulham is still only 17 years old ( so you’d imagine he’d need more protecting than a 20 year old ) and over the same 2016/17 and 2017/18 season he’s played 57 league matches, scoring 17 goals and assisting many others.

There are other cases too like Dominic Calvert-Lewin who is now 20 years old and as an 18 year old we only used him only 11 times in the league between 2014 & 2017, then sell him to Everton for £1.5m.

Almost immediately he’s part of The England U20 World Cup Winning Team, scores in the final and Everton play him in Premiership matches 36 times in one and a half seasons.

Just wondered others thoughts about why we don’t get the talented youth into our ranks earlier ?

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You raise a very fair point. Someone recently sent a link to me re a programme about academies on BT. One of the main coaches at a Premiership academy said that for groups of lads in each age catagory at academies only two will have a chance of making it on average and they know which two these are from their early/mid ****s. The programme presenter asked if that was the case why did they let the other lads waste their time at the academy if the only outcome was to shatter their dreams. The coach replied that the two lads who will make it have to have someone to play in the team with them. I thought that was rather sad.

Whilst posting, do you have any ITK on the impending takeover GOTI?