Youth set up

[alfinyalcabo]

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

[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]

As I said --you are living in a different era as far as football is concerned. There were lots of lads around who really wanted to play football and were playing in local leagues before they ever got to the Turf.
Nowadays, because Academies are taking kids as young as 6 or 7 years old there are too many thrown on the scrap heap by the time they are 15 years old and they just lose interest.
We used to have leagues up here in the north east with 12 divisions of 12 teams in Newcastle as well as various other local leagues with three divisions of 14+ teams.
We now have approximately one third of the number of leagues and probably only one quarter the number of players actually playing at a reasonable level and developing. This is prevalent throughout the country if you talk to other people who are involved in the game.

As I said before, there were mega problems at Burnley until just recently and a lot of scouts just packed in, therefore, the whole system has to be rebuilt and this is what is happening. Unfortunately, this will all take time and, because we are now in the PL, the opportunity to 'blood' someone will be less than if we were in a lower league.

Believe me, I have followed the Clarets since 1952 and saw all those players you have listed going through their development, however, the football world has changed dramatically. I would love to see lads coming through as in the past, however, it is not just Burnley that have had problems.

Subersub6 as I have said previously I agree with most of your comments, like me I also have watched the clarets for many years. However, I suppose I would have to say that our scouting set up must be pretty poor and looking in the wrong places. In fact you would think that there might be more British talent knocking about because many of the bigger teams are bringing in more youngsters rom abroad. The one thing I am not having is we cannot scout players, like the ones in my list, around the UK. Clearly we might not get the real outstanding ones as they might be picked up by the bigger clubs but many on my list were not considered really outstanding but it was when they arrived at BFC the coaching they got meant they were all well schooled and could have gone on to greater things. I am of the opinion that there are players out there that have not been picked up who have the potential to achieve the same as those on my list. So for me it is about scouting, being able to school them appropriately in order to tease out there ability, but also give them early opportunities (better than the big clubs) to stake their claims into the first team. If we don't do those three things then our youth set up will never achieve. And although the league structures have diminished it does not follow that the players are not there. May be it is time to establish who are the best scouts and pay them to spot the talent for our club (remember Jack Hixon who scouted for us and others) we need the best scouts to find the best talent.

[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.

[Supersub6]

Subersub6 as I have said previously I agree with most of your comments, like me I also have watched the clarets for many years. However, I suppose I would have to say that our scouting set up must be pretty poor and looking in the wrong places. In fact you would think that there might be more British talent knocking about because many of the bigger teams are bringing in more youngsters rom abroad. The one thing I am not having is we cannot scout players, like the ones in my list, around the UK. Clearly we might not get the real outstanding ones as they might be picked up by the bigger clubs but many on my list were not considered really outstanding but it was when they arrived at BFC the coaching they got meant they were all well schooled and could have gone on to greater things. I am of the opinion that there are players out there that have not been picked up who have the potential to achieve the same as those on my list. So for me it is about scouting, being able to school them appropriately in order to tease out there ability, but also give them early opportunities (better than the big clubs) to stake their claims into the first team. If we don't do those three things then our youth set up will never achieve. And although the league structures have diminished it does not follow that the players are not there. May be it is time to establish who are the best scouts and pay them to spot the talent for our club (remember Jack Hixon who scouted for us and others) we need the best scouts to find the best talent.

Jack Hixon R.I.P. would be struggling up here these days because he used to scout around the local schools and leagues. The schools, apart from a few, hardly play any football and, as I explained, there are nowhere near the number of leagues, therefore, nowhere near the number of talented footballers. South East Northumberland Schools team provided quite a number of those Burnley players you listed and a few played in the same team!

[Supersub6]

Just was thinking back to my days spent playing, refereeing and coaching down in the home counties and I remember seeing Kevin Phillips playing for Baldock in the early 1990s. He had been released by Southampton at the age of 17 because he was thought to be too small. He signed for Baldock and played there for a couple of years before he was signed by Watford in 1994. He was 23 years old when he mae his debut for them and he certainly went on to have a very good career.
Southampton's youth set up is considered top of the tree and has produced quite a lot of players who have gone on to have decent careers, however, Kevin Phillips was one that they let escape the net.

The new set up at Burnley is very much in its infancy as a Cat 2 and only time will tell as far as results are concerned.

[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.

[oldcolner]

Just was thinking back to my days spent playing, refereeing and coaching down in the home counties and I remember seeing Kevin Phillips playing for Baldock in the early 1990s. He had been released by Southampton at the age of 17 because he was thought to be too small. He signed for Baldock and played there for a couple of years before he was signed by Watford in 1994. He was 23 years old when he mae his debut for them and he certainly went on to have a very good career.
Southampton's youth set up is considered top of the tree and has produced quite a lot of players who have gone on to have decent careers, however, Kevin Phillips was one that they let escape the net.

The new set up at Burnley is very much in its infancy as a Cat 2 and only time will tell as far as results are concerned.

Southampton players
Le tissier
Bale
Shearer
Lallana
Luke shaw
Oxlade chamberlain.
Walcott
Ward Prowse
Simms

Some who they let go
Danny Ings
Wade Elliot

One they missed
Sam Vokes born there but had to go to Bournemouth.