Quote Originally Posted by Freeman25 View Post
What are you basing that on? We've thrown in plenty of youngsters that looked completely out of their depth that I can think of over the years, Greg Tempest, Curtis Thompson (when we played him at right back originally), Colby Bishop, Montel Gibson, Romello Nangle, Malachi Lavelle-Moore, Tyrell Waite, Kyle Dixon, Declan Dunn.

You may think a couple of those are bad examples as they've now gone on to better things but for Bishop for example it took 3 or 4 years to get to Accrington, likewise for Gibson with his move to Grimsby and Curtis was in and around our first team for 5 years before leaving.

At this level you can't afford to hang around waiting for players to develop, you have to pick them up on their rise back into the leagues and the truly gifted players that actually come through will probably get poached by Premierleague clubs before most fans have even heard of them like Kion Etete, Dongda He and Jack Bearne. But even with those 3, those Premierleague teams are happy and able to keep them in their youth teams developing, we don't have that luxury so if they're not good enough or ready yet you have to act and bring someone in who is capable.
Bang on Freeman !

Football has changed since those halcyon days of Johnson, Draper, Yates etc. All the talent is hoovered up by the bigger clubs for a pittance. In effect our youth system has been working as a production line for the vultures rather than us.

IMO the Football Radar 'Money Ball' approach - so effective for Brentford and Brighton - is the way forward for a club like us. We pick up Premier League discards, others from higher leagues and overseas, using football analytics. Cal Roberts being a prime example of this gameplan in action.