Quote Originally Posted by darrenshedtastic View Post
The emphasis on young players is strange.

Surely anyone who knows anything about football knows that you can't just chuck a big group of young players and expect to be competing at the top end of the table. You need experienced players capable of guiding these young players through when there form drops.

The McNamara 2014 team had a good group of young players in it but only 2 of those had been plucked out of nowhere really. Gauld and Souttar (who only properly broke into the 1st team the season before) and they were eased in and out of the team due to the other players we had in the squad. Guys like Armstrong, Dow and Gms had at least 2/3 years within the first team in a good team before they were ready to be the key players. Russell and Goodwillie were the same before them. We very rarely just through young players in and expect them to compete. McNamara in 2016 decided Spittal, Fraser, Connolly, Telfer, Zwick, Donaldson etc were all ready to be key players when they clearly weren't. They needed another season at least of being back up to better players.

I am all for young players getting their chance but 1. if they are good enough and 2. if we develop them correctly. Don't just chuck them in because we want to look good. That normally backfires.
good post daz