Montel Gibson

[pjace]

Remember him? Scored a few for our youngsters and reserves a few years back only 22 now scored his 3rd goal of the season for Grimsby last night

[ncfcog]

Add him to the list . . . Thompson at Wycombe, Wildin at Stevenage, Bishop at Accrington, and now Cummings on trial at Wednesday. The good news is we CAN produce football league level talent therefore moving forward we need to make sure we get rewarded for our investment be that monetary by sell on or performances in the first team.

[nw6pie]

The problem with the likes of Gibson, and Bishop before him, is that they needed a few years to mature by playing games at non-league level. Not sure Notts have the resources to wait a few years for them to potentially come good. Probably makes more sense to look for the Cal Roberts types who were discarded by Premier League clubs but have then proven themselves in non-league.

[pjace]

The problem with the likes of Gibson, and Bishop before him, is that they needed a few years to mature by playing games at non-league level. Not sure Notts have the resources to wait a few years for them to potentially come good. Probably makes more sense to look for the Cal Roberts types who were discarded by Premier League clubs but have then proven themselves in non-league.

If we did that is there really any point in having a youth set up

[Elite_Pie]

If we did that is there really any point in having a youth set up

I suppose we'd need to know whether the kids we've sold have brought in enough cash to cover the costs. Jack Bearne, Dongda He and Kion Etete have all gone to Premiership clubs for decent fees (Etete was reported to have gone to Spurs for £200,000). They were no benefit to us on the pitch, but if any of them make the grade and we've got a few add-ons it might still be profitable.

[CheltenhamPie]

Perhaps the fact that we appear to have professional owners will lead to a system that both generates young talent and allow Notts to profit from it. An excellent role model for this must surely be Brentford.

[queenslandpie]

I suppose we'd need to know whether the kids we've sold have brought in enough cash to cover the costs. Jack Bearne, Dongda He and Kion Etete have all gone to Premiership clubs for decent fees (Etete was reported to have gone to Spurs for £200,000). They were no benefit to us on the pitch, but if any of them make the grade and we've got a few add-ons it might still be profitable.

Even if we made 6 or 700k out of that lot then over the years with wages costs blah blah blah that amount of cash might just about cover costs. Cash cow it 'aint.

[Elite_Pie]

Even if we made 6 or 700k out of that lot then over the years with wages costs blah blah blah that amount of cash might just about cover costs. Cash cow it 'aint.

I think you would need to know more than the likes of me and you about the way youth systems are funded to be sure of that. I think there used to be an EFL grant towards it, but I don't know if that still applies at this level. My old mate MiG seemed to have a bit of insider info on this, but he hasn't posted on here much since Hardy left. The idea of having youth teams in the old days was always to provide cheap talent for the first team, but I'm not sure that still applies these days.

[nw6pie]

Perhaps the fact that we appear to have professional owners will lead to a system that both generates young talent and allow Notts to profit from it. An excellent role model for this must surely be Brentford.

Brentford scrapped their academy in 2016:

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/46864784

I would love it if Notts had a successful youth system, but it’s expensive (did we lose funding for it when we dropped out of the EFL?) and there are zero guarantees it will work. Also, the Bosman ruling made it too easy for clubs to just pick up a new batch of players every year rather than develop their own.

There’s something wonderful about watching “one of your own” make it into the first team, but these days the real talents are sold off as soon as a Premier League team comes sniffing - and there’s nothing a smaller club can do about it. That said, I used to love watching Notts’ youth team competing in the FA Youth Cup back in the day - maybe my memory’s going, but I’m sure I saw us beat Arsenal one year.

[jackal2]

The problem with the likes of Gibson, and Bishop before him, is that they needed a few years to mature by playing games at non-league level. Not sure Notts have the resources to wait a few years for them to potentially come good. Probably makes more sense to look for the Cal Roberts types who were discarded by Premier League clubs but have then proven themselves in non-league.

Nobody would criticise the Cal Roberts signing, but he has hardly been typical of our recruitment in recent years, which has only improved since Football Radar got involved.

You can go through our squads from around the time all these youngsters were being released and find a bucket load of players we signed who offered virtually nothing (except a ticket to relegation out of the league) so we might just as well have blooded more of our kids and let them develop, even if it did take time and a few heavy defeats along the way (which we got anyway!).

Crewe Alexandra are probably the best model of a club that is never scared to blood youngsters early, even if they are a bit raw to begin with. Of course not every kid is going to improve sufficiently to make it, but nowhere does a young player have more time and opportunity to try. They gamble on their young talent. And they're in League One now.

I don't think the standard of the youth training at Crewe will be dramatically better than what we've got, but they give their kids every chance possible to play first-team football , and that's why they end up with so many successful graduates. Others clubs and managers just hide behind the "not quite ready yet" / "one for the future" narrative rather than take the risk (which isn't such a risk).