Dayle Southwell

Pearson is what, 4 years a professional? Doesn't really strike me as ready to pass on his experience of the game just yet.  In fact he's still learning the game.  You never stop learning I suppose.

Not saying Shaun isn't going to be a good coach or mentor, just isn't what I was referring to really.  I was thinking more along the lines of a seasoned pro nearing retirement and giving something back.  Completely different era and circumstances but Jim Dobbin came back to Town in 1998 as reserve captain with the instruction to mentor the young fringe players.  

Quoted from diehardmariner

Pearson is what, 4 years a professional? Doesn't really strike me as ready to pass on his experience of the game just yet.  In fact he's still learning the game.  You never stop learning I suppose.
  

I think the football side of mentoring is actually quite small. What he will be instilling is determination, work-rate and professionalism. He's worked outside of football as a semi-pro and worked very hard to progress to where he is. He has much more real-life experience than a lot of footballers who have come through academies. He seems the perfect role-model to me.

Don't disagree he's a good role model but, for me, he hasn't been in the game himself long enough to pass on his nous.

Just like how we can't afford to give young lads a fair crack at the professional game, we can't afford to employ someone in this role.  

I don't agree, unless you think that age matters above anything else, a great deal of leaders and teachers start young in both the schools and forces.
It's about leading by example and with that comes respect

I'm not talking about a leader of men or a captain.  I'm talking about someone to pass on their vast experience from the game. Pearson simply doesn't have that experience from his own game to do that, yet.

I'm not denying he's a good leader, commands respect nor indeed will be become an excellent coach and mentor in the future.  

I'm talking about players like Paul Futcher who had been there, seen it all and got the t-shirt.  Then towards the end of their career were able to help the next generation come through.  Whilst Futcher was here we saw Mark Lever and John McDermott become far more accomplished players plus Peter Handyside and Gary Croft emerge as young professionals.

Talking about the youngsters what happened to Jonny Rowan and Darren Mansaram?

Quoted from biggles9999

Pretty much yes you are living in the past.

It is very difficult for teams to keep their best local players these days especially at our level because of the ability of the big clubs to pick and choose who they want to sign and move into their huge sprawling youth systems.

You have named about 10/15 players in 50 years of history that have been developed by ourselves and proved good enough for either us long term or higher levels. That is always unlikely to be enough to build a contingent of local players, especially in the days of fans wanting quick fixes and short term contracts.

I could name a lot more players who have come through the youth system over the years. Pete was almost one of them!

It is not that difficult for a club to keep young players. We are doing it all the time. Two more have just been signed on one year contracts. Maybe we will wave goodbye to the likes of Winfarrah and Walker in a few weeks.

There are two problems for young players at Grimsby. Firstly they get little or no game time at a level that will bring them on unless they get loaned out and that is usually to a club below us. The second problem is the manager. He does not want to take any risk if he can avoid it. He knows a young player takes a while to settle. He knows it was unfair to judge Southwell and others on an odd match and a few minutes sub time. But there is a reason he won't ever take the risk of giving a young player a run in the first team. He is short term results oriented because his job depends on it. Therefore he would rather sign a Parslow than teach Walker how to be a right back and possibly lose games because of it.

If you want players to come through the youth set up you have to have a manager prepared to gamble and give kids a chance. We need a Tom Casey or a David O'Leary or Tim Sherwood type of guy. That would mean a lot more effort in scouting and youth players getting more reserve team time as well, so no signings that just clog up the bench.

You can't blame the manager though. At this club, every manager is a slave to promotion so he has to focus on what he thinks is the quickest way to do it.

It would help if we had a proper reserve side
Then the bench warmers, like bignot, paddy, Hannah and the first year pros and youth players etc would get regular games, then they would not be so stale and off the pace when they were called upon.

Quoted from mariner91

Yes you can only beat what's in front of you but if someone uses stats that aren't in context then it's misleading. He took his chance against a team three leagues lower, more than half his goals came in that game, suggesting that he didn't take his chances any other time really or at least very rarely. Three leagues at this level is a huge difference, that's the same level Brigg Town play. It proves precisely nothing for a player at this level to be able to score against those sort of teams.

It suggests nothing of the sort. The fact he could score against lower level opposition does not mean he could not score against opposition on the same level as us. That is illogical. Utterly illogical. If Southwell had failed against the likes of Coalville then you'd have the beginnings of a case against him. The lad didn't get much other time in the first team, whilst others had much more game time and dismally failed to get more than a few goals. And we haven't even got to the pound for pound argument.

The first teamers failed against the same lower level opposition. If anything that suggests that they weren't up to it whilst Southwell was because he didn't fail. On the basis of scoring against lower opposition, you cannot deduce that he would have failed against better opposition. It's simply nonsensical.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

It suggests nothing of the sort. The fact he could score against lower level opposition does not mean he could not score against opposition on the same level as us. That is illogical. Utterly illogical. If Southwell had failed against the likes of Coalville then you'd have the beginnings of a case against him. The lad didn't get much other time in the first team, whilst others had much more game time and dismally failed to get more than a few goals. And we haven't even got to the pound for pound argument.

The first teamers failed against the same lower level opposition. If anything that suggests that they weren't up to it whilst Southwell was because he didn't fail. On the basis of scoring against lower opposition, you cannot deduce that he would have failed against better opposition. It's simply nonsensical.

It's not a deduction at all and I fail to see how you can't grasp that, it's a fact that he didn't score many against the teams in our league. He scored 5 all season, more than half of them in that one game against a team many levels below. Therefore, over the course of the season he managed 2 goals against opposition in the same league as us which isn't exactly inspiring. That is not to say that if he'd been started more that he wouldn't have scored but you claimed he took his chances without putting it in to context, my point all along was that your claim of him "taking his chances" has to be taken with a pinch of salt as most of his goals were against really shite opposition. If you can't understand the concept that proving you can score against a team like Coalville doesn't prove you can consistently score against teams three leagues higher then God help us. The higher up the football pyramid a team is, the more difficult it is to score against them. You only have to look at Ross Hannah who scored nearly 50 in a season at that sort of level and isn't anywhere near replicating that for us. Hearn scored 30 odd goals for us at this level but would you suggest he could have mirrored that in the Championship? Of course you wouldn't. Or is that also being "utterly illogical"?