Quote Originally Posted by pass_and_move View Post
Some interesting points made there Animal. I think back to the early 90s when Mel Machin was the manager. He went down the route of signing young players who weren't really going to get a serious look in at the big clubs. He brought in the likes of Andy Rammell from Manchester United, Gerry Taggart and Gary Flemming from Manchester City, Owen Archdeacon from Celtic. All went on to do very well for this club and were good players in a pretty solid Barnsley team but as you say, times have changed.

In more recent times we've brought in some good young players from bigger clubs- Adam Hammill, Lewin Nyatanga, Luke Steele, Danny Nardiello, Jacob Mellis etc

It can also go the other way of course. I remember Dale Jennings, Devante Cole, Kelvin Etuhu, Reece Brown, Emmanuel Frimpong who were all bigged up because of their pedigree at big clubs but they turned out to be below average and have gone on to pretty much nothing since being here.

When you're looking for the young premiership players in the age range you mention, I think of players like Adam Armstrong, Ashley Fletcher, Ivan Toney and Ryan Kent who have all been here on loan, done well then been sold to someone else by their parent clubs which begs the question- Can we afford these type of players even having already looked at them in action? Clearly not.

Ashley Fletcher went for 4m to West ham then onto Boro for 6.5m. Ryan Kent 6.5m to Rangers. Both of these way out of our depth.

More realistic was Adam Armstrong, Blackburn paid 1.75million for him. Ivan Toney cost Peterborough 700k which now looks a bargain although he hasn't played in the championship. We obviously weren't prepared to stick our neck out and gamble at the time on either player coming good for us in the Championship.

Of course Cauley Woodrow has been a great acquisition and highlights the type of player that you're on about. We went right under the radar signing him. It'd be nice to drop on more players like him but they're few and far between.

Scrapping the Academy wouldn't be a good idea in my honest opinion, especially with the route this club has taken in the last 5 years. If you'd have suggested it a few years ago I probably would've agreed with you.
What's happening is that these kids are going out on loan and gaining a decent value by doing well , the players you highlight are good examples .

The big PL clubs have got this pretty much stitched up haven't they ?

I agree it's a difficult nut to crack but I'm also looking at the academy from a financial perspective and asking are we getting the value out of it ?

You take John Stones and Mason Holgate out of it in the 20 years we've had it and it's a loss maker , even including those two its probably not paid for itself .

Somewhere along the line this thing has to at least pay for itself at a minimum otherwise it just becomes an ideology that doesn't stack up financially .

One Cauley Woodrow or Connor Chaplin costs the same amount as running the academy for an entire year that isn't really producing anything .

It's a difficult conundrum to say the least .