Youth set up

[oldcolner]

I've played with a few of them as well.

Football I trust!
Changed times Lancaster

In those days though you grew your own and transfers were few and far between as money was tight.. Few signed an overseas player as no one knew anything about them and who would move here for £25 a week and have to learn the language. Managers were all British.
Now overseas players seem the default position as many clubs have pots of money and many spend even more than they have. Many players speak English Southampton have done best in recent times in developing talent but big clubs drain the swamp of much talent and we fight over scraps and rejects. Few PL managers are British.

[blueheeler1]

Football I trust!
Changed times Lancaster

In those days though you grew your own and transfers were few and far between as money was tight.. Few signed an overseas player as no one knew anything about them and who would move here for £25 a week and have to learn the language. Managers were all British.
Now overseas players seem the default position as many clubs have pots of money and many spend even more than they have. Many players speak English Southampton have done best in recent times in developing talent but big clubs drain the swamp of much talent and we fight over scraps and rejects. Few PL managers are British.

I live in Perth, Western Australia, and there is great football talent over here-my grandson at 15 is one of them and plays for the WA academy team and has represented WA against the Eastern States teams.

There have been the odd Perth Academy set up by Burnley but soon gone. As I recall, it competed with the WA academy for players and sought exclusivity of young talent without really offering them anything in return. I could be wrong but I think they went on to New Zealand with their concept?

O'neill the youngster playing at Burnley comes from Australia but from Queensland I seem to remember and came to Burnley via a private scouting system?

It wouldn't harm Burnley to send a couple of scouts over here for a month to assess youngsters playing in our NPL (National Premiership League) which is the second tier under our professional A-League.

So many of the youngsters have British passports as they are born from ex-pats thus saving all the problems of playing non-British players.

Worth the Burnley FC time and effort with bags of reward at the end of this option.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Good shout that one blueheeler1.

[lancaster100]

Football I trust!
Changed times Lancaster

In those days though you grew your own and transfers were few and far between as money was tight.. Few signed an overseas player as no one knew anything about them and who would move here for £25 a week and have to learn the language. Managers were all British.
Now overseas players seem the default position as many clubs have pots of money and many spend even more than they have. Many players speak English Southampton have done best in recent times in developing talent but big clubs drain the swamp of much talent and we fight over scraps and rejects. Few PL managers are British.

Can't agree with your sentiments about growing your own when transfers were few. In fact many of our home grown were sold on only for their place to be filled by another youngster. It was always a bone of contention and concern that one day we would sell and not have a youngster good enough to take over. Fortunately if we got a gem into the first team we would not need to sell because of all the TV money and even if we did sell we would get mega money for the player.

[oldcolner]

Can't agree with your sentiments about growing your own when transfers were few. In fact many of our home grown were sold on only for their place to be filled by another youngster. It was always a bone of contention and concern that one day we would sell and not have a youngster good enough to take over. Fortunately if we got a gem into the first team we would not need to sell because of all the TV money and even if we did sell we would get mega money for the player.

Lancaster
But how many players did we buy in the 60s, very few. Alex Elder was the one I remember in 1959 for £3k and next we bought Colin Waldron for £30k in 1967. ( we bought another for £30k around the same time)

So we did grow our own. Yes we had to sell but there was always another in the wings at that time. Other clubs did buy more players but not at today’s levels and when they did they almost entirely came from British clubs, a few British players came back from Europe but few Europeans or Africans etc played top level.