Duncan Idehan

Gotta be honest, I thought he was awful and miles from league 2 level. He was shoved around too easily, slow to react and see the picture and physically weak. He'll get physically stronger and will benefit by not being coached by a madman, good luck to him.

I'd have kept Idehan personally and tried to develop him with a good loan at NLN/S with some appearances here and there. Quite clearly wasn't a ready made product in the way Pollock was but as we've seen with Clifton if you can be patient and persevere through their youth then you may have a player on your hands.

The difficulty any manager has with young players and GTFC (or any club I suppose) is the demand for success. If we bemoan the faults of senior pro's and their inability to score, pass, their touch or whatever, if a manager placed trust and faith in our academy graduates who will inevitably make mistakes as they find themselves it begs the question whether fans would support said youngster and the manager for the decision, or continue to bemoan if success doesn't follow it. With the managers job a precarious position at the best of times it's understandable that many won't often gamble with youth, particularly at this level where it can be very physical.

As someone mentioned in a post, with the larger clubs and their sizeable U23s there's a longer timeframe they can take to assess the development of the kids before they make decisions to release or promote to first team.

For the readers on the board there's a great book called 'No Hunger In Paradise' by Michael Calvin which is all about academy football. Very insightful to the harsh reality of that level of the game. Worth a read.

Duncan Idehen

I think James it up quite nicely, Hurst has never really looked to develop the young lads during his time here.  That's not a criticism of Hurst, I think his approach is the victim of circumstance.  During his first spell the remit was always very short term, never looking beyond May time with a view to getting back in the football league.  That's not an environment that lends itself towards giving someone who's 19/20 a contract for another year to develop just a little bit more.  Whilst the likes of Paul Walker, Caine Winnfarah et al may have benefited from another year, Hurst felt that over the course of the season he was better using that budget on the likes of Evan Horwood or Christian Jolley come the final few months of the season.  You can't blame him for that.

I can only really think of Andi Thanoj who broke through under Hurst and got a consistent run of games.  In Thanoj was a very good player who it's probably fair to say never quite fulfilled his potential for a variety of reasons.  But for the relative success we've had with the youth set-up, the success rate was poor during those Conference years.  Thanoj with Clifton and Wright enjoying loan spells at Grantham, Boston and Scarborough levels.

With 1878 having more of an eye on the future and long term planning, it surprised me that Starbuck and Idehen were let go.  Starbuck didn't have a great first year of a pro (Jesus, who had a decent year last season?) but he was outstanding as a final year YT and has since established himself nicely at an Academy Under 23 side. Of course there are arguments about some of the quality in those sides but by all accounts he's actually doing well, that's at a level that's considerably higher than the infrequent reserve games we have.    At this stage, this has to be chalked up as one that got away.  

Quite unsure why Idehen has been singled out as such a poor performer last season.  I thought he looked raw but with potential.  He was making his first bow into professional football on the left hand side of a disjointed defence with either the injured Mattie Pollock or well off the pace Luke Waterfall one side of him, then the horrifically exposed Danny Preston the other side.  This isn't really a compliment but I thought in the early stages of the season he was our best defender.

I've got a feeling that Hurst felt both would benefit from moving away from the club, perhaps to refocus or just because that first year was so poor that there's no recovery for a young player in those circumstances.  The fact they've both been picked up by clubs much higher in the level doesn't suggest ability is the issue.

If (and this is speculating) they were released in order to free up funds for the squad in other areas, then it's bloody annoying that we've been lumbered with the salary of Sean Scannell for another and ended up signing Joel Grant.  Hindsight and all if's and but's, yet difficult to not wonder how many raw 18/19 year old lads could get another years development for the same cost as those two...

It looks like the youth production line is continuing to churn out talent under Neil Woods.  The gap is that bridge between youth and men's game. I've seen stuff from 1878 that they want to see our homegrown talent emerge and establish themselves, sometimes you've gotta give the lads a fair run at it to see if they'll make it.  Jack Lester didn't look anything like a Championship level striker in his first half season, it was only his loan spell at Doncaster that saw him come back a different beast altogether.

Problem we have is that there is no progression from youth to first team. They are youth players one minute and first team the next with nothing in between to help them develop. The step up from youth to first team is too big for some, especially those that are developing more slowly.

Quoted from mimma

Problem we have is that there is no progression from youth to first team. They are youth players one minute and first team the next with nothing in between to help them develop. The step up from youth to first team is too big for some, especially those that are developing more slowly.

Which is why you establish relationships with clubs and get them out on loan. It wasn't until Clifton had a season at Grantham and Max did a season at Scarborough followed by Boston that they started to show something.

Quoted from mimma

Problem we have is that there is no progression from youth to first team. They are youth players one minute and first team the next with nothing in between to help them develop. The step up from youth to first team is too big for some, especially those that are developing more slowly.

We aren't really in a position to carry passengers unfortunately, most of our talented kids go to big clubs that can hoard players anyway. I think this is another case of a kid who didn't adjust to the first team fast enough for us, we have one of those on loan though in his first season of men's football not adjusting well lol. We can't afford to keep players on hoping they'll develop by the time they are 25 into a player capable of first team football, we need people who can come in and do a job for us and not a giant squad of players who aren't good enough.

Nothing particularly about Idehan said to me we'd miss him, apart from maybe one friendly where he did a decent job he looked way out of his depth in L2. Good luck to him in the future but football is a difficult career to get into and many kids end up on the scrapheap in their mid 20's playing for non league teams or lower league teams in Scotland, Wales or Ireland.

But if we consistently take the approach that we can't afford to carry passengers, so to speak, we'll never truly develop our own players - not on a regular basis anyway.

As long as we see them as a drain on the budget, passengers etc. they'll always be just that.  I fully appreciate budget constraints and that we simply have to cut our cloth accordingly, but if we're only going to ever give one-year contracts to lads at 17/18 and release them unless they've established themselves in the first team then we'll always be disappointed.

The vast majority of professional footballers aren't anywhere near ready for first team action at 18, 19, even 20.  When they graduate from the youth team they're still kids pretty much.  Their physical, technical and tactical development has only just begun.  We give them 12 months to adjust, continue to develop and make an impact.  Simply not long enough for the absolute vast majority.

My personal view is that anyone deemed good enough to get a professional contract from the youth team should have a two-year contract as a minimum.  I know it's absolute worlds apart but the likes of Man Utd, Liverpool etc. don't issue one-year contracts to youth players because they know it's not enough.  The rare occasions in recent season where we have given time for the young lads to develop it has produced first teamers (Clifton and Wright).  The only one who progressed ahead of his time was Pollock, who was physically years ahead of his peers and a bit of an anomaly in that sense.

Of course the golden ticket is you get a transfer fee from a youth team graduate and can then reinvest that in both the set-up and then maybe the funding of some of the contracts for the new graduates.   Unfortunately we saw our recent football fortune on that front eaten up...

I think it's a bit daft to suggest that we've made some kind of mistake on him just because he's signed for a Championship club. They hoover up as much as possible for relatively little and hope they can develop players enough for a profit, a hell of a lot more players in these academies end up outside of football than they do in it. There's nothing to suggest we've made a mistake just yet.

FWIW I thought Idehen looked a million miles out of his depth for us but good luck to him trying to make his way in the game.

Clifton and Wright do appear to be the exception to the rule as we gave them both 3 or 4 years to establish themselves, since that point, about three seasons back they've both been firmly in and around the team when fit.

Actually Battersby comes into this category too but a few years younger, you'd guess that crunch time is coming up for him this or next year.

More generally our approach looks much like: YT gets a 12 month contract, said YT is binned off after 12 months and replaced by a new YT. Rinse, repeat.  

Maybe we'd be better off taking on less each year and persevering with those taken on for longer, as with Clifton and Wright.