Quote Originally Posted by RU66 View Post
Long gone are the days when we get a batch of young players coming through breaking into the 1st team. Last one was Wiles next one? It's getting more difficult for us to attract those type of younger players. Can't remember the last manager either who gave enough young players a chance to progress further here.
Quote Originally Posted by UlleyMiller View Post
...Bramall (Arsenal), Viking (Villa), Humphreys (City), Rathbone (Manyoo), Barlaser (Newcastle) were all about 19/20 when they were discarded....
Bramall - Colchester picked him up.
Viktor - Leicester initially, and then us at the age of 21 after zero games for them.
Humphreys - Zulte (Belgian League, ranked 9th in Europe) before we got him from them at 23.
Rathbone - Rochdale.
Barlaser - Us, after zero games for Newcastle.

Nobody is pretending this is easy, but these are a handful we've seen who followed this route, and every one of them would have seen us as a decent option (if they didn't come here initially). How is dumping a next-to-useless academy for something like this doing anything which is costlier, more difficult, or challenging for a manager?