Academy Vs Notts Forest

I see the club keep tweeting about the academy teams playing against NFFC at Blundell Park this Sunday. Sounds like a good day for the youngsters at the club.

Anyone planning on going down to watch? I might pop down for the day as interested to see what future stars we can look forward too. Neil Woods quite rightly getting lots of praise with recent players coming through so I think this might be worth a few fans going down to watch.

UTM

For anyone at a loose end today:

https://www.grimsby-townfc.co......rnament-next-sunday/

All age groups playing.

BBQ and drinks etc.

Free entry.

Well done the club for putting this on.  We're very lucky to have a good youth system here and I think THE major success of the season is how we've had some great young players come through, which will help to make the club sustainable over the long term.

Quoted from HackneyHaddock

Well done the club for putting this on.  We're very lucky to have a good youth system here and I think THE major success of the season is how we've had some great young players come through, which will help to make the club sustainable over the long term.

Steady on. Great young players? Making the bench for a struggling lower league  2 club is hardly going to keep us "sustainable over the long term", is it?

The best local players don't come here for a start - they get snapped up by bigger clubs. Yes we can develop the rest, but history shows that most promising players fall by the wayside well before they ever reach maturity.

If we haven't got any foreseeable investment coming into the club then our only option is to hope that some young players make it through, but the chances of younger players making us anything other than League 2 fodder are remote.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

Steady on. Great young players? Making the bench for a struggling lower league  2 club is hardly going to keep us "sustainable over the long term", is it?

The best local players don't come here for a start - they get snapped up by bigger clubs. Yes we can develop the rest, but history shows that most promising players fall by the wayside well before they ever reach maturity.

If we haven't got any foreseeable investment coming into the club then our only option is to hope that some young players make it through, but the chances of younger players making us anything other than League 2 fodder are remote.

Fine, but still a bit needlessly churlish, especially after they've just won their age group league and provided a third of our match day squad recently.  In our league, having half a dozen competent academy players in a squad can help stretch the budget to allow for more to be spent on other players.  Rather Clifton, Wright and Pollock than be burning through money on the likes of Welsh or Clarke.

Quoted from HackneyHaddock

Fine, but still a bit needlessly churlish, especially after they've just won their age group league and provided a third of our match day squad recently.  In our league, having half a dozen competent academy players in a squad can help stretch the budget to allow for more to be spent on other players.  Rather Clifton, Wright and Pollock than be burning through money on the likes of Welsh or Clarke.

Churlish I agree. But clubs all over the country produce young players all the time, but the best are snapped up by bigger clubs and that is just a fact of football life.

The idea that we are going to be transformed by younger players coming through is remote.

In 60 years of going to BP I have known one set of young players coming through together (Drinkell, Lund, Wilkinson etc) and only a handful of local players such as John Oster playing at a high level in all that time. It just is not going to happen.

Its great that the academy team have won their league; but it is the first team that matters and history shows us that winning things as a teenager does not mean a bean further down the line.

Good points on both sides.there's a long list going back 30 years of youngsters coming through playing a couple o f games and disappearing into obscurity, Graham hockless anyone?
The present crop still have questions to answer , will Clifton and rose be the answ ers once they have recovered from injury, is max Wright strong enough whilst we haven't seen enough of Pollack or Burrell to make any judgement. Having said that i d far rather have them in the squad than wasters like Karleigh Osborne or Paul dixon

We might not be reaping the rewards yet or even for several years but our best hope is to adopt something similar to the Exeter model. In the last two years, they’ve sold Ollie Watkins, Ethan Ampadu and Jordan Storey for a combined total of nearly £3million.

Maybe they’ve got lucky but it’s something to aim for. The current situation with the youth is the best it’s been for well over a decade.

Quoted from Grantley

We might not be reaping the rewards yet or even for several years but our best hope is to adopt something similar to the Exeter model. In the last two years, they’ve sold Ollie Watkins, Ethan Ampadu and Jordan Storey for a combined total of nearly £3million.

Maybe they’ve got lucky but it’s something to aim for. The current situation with the youth is the best it’s been for well over a decade.

And Exeter are still in league 2. It is nice to have the £3 million obviously, minus the cost of running the Youth set up of course. Investment in the first team squad, with one or two promising youth players is great. Relying on a youth system to save us and produce a first team to be proud of is unlikely in the extreme.

I don't see the youth as the answers to the first team to be proud of as such Lew, I see it as an option to sell said youth to help fund the first team, but that will come once they have established themselves.  Just a couple of examples, not sure who else has come through the youth and we've sold on.  Scunny made most of theres by signing players like Sharp, and Hooper etc, not sure if they have sold youth on for a tidy profit.

Croft - Blackburn 1 mill
Oster - Everton 1.5 mill
Bennett - Peterborough 500K