Has our youth system every produced a really decent striker?

[Lady Whistledown]

Considering that for our entire history before Wilkins took over our youth system produced virtually no players at all* for the first team I think the progress over the last ten years has been astounding. No, no strikers yet, but give it time.

*I can't think of any, but I'm sure there must have been some.

The aforementioned Ian Chapman, Paul McCarthy, Kerry Mayo, and we did have a collection of vaguely competent Stuarts in the early 1990s- Tuck, Myall, Munday.

I may be accused of heresy here, but did Dean Wilkins really do that much for our scheme? Yes, he put a few of his players in the first team, but none of them have gone on to significantly great things. Hammond & Harding are at the same level as us, Cox, Virgo, Robinson, Hinshelwood, Gatting etc all ended up lower, in some cases much lower. We have yet to see any real stars, with the exception of El Abd last season, and I think it fair to say his improvement has been down to Poyet more than anything else. We were simply used to such dross that anyone who came along and didn't look completely out of their depth was an improvement. I'm not suggesting Wilkins was rubbish, merely that he moved us up from "appalling" to "average" in the production stakes. I don't really see a legacy, put it that way. We have yet to achieve the reputation of being a club that regularly produces players with real potential, merely the occasional hopeful.

 

[JBizzle]

I always think that people are incredibly harsh on our youth system. Bearing in mind players who came through in the Withdean Years played a vital role in our club. Virgo, Robinson, Lynch, Harding, Hammond, El-Abd, Hinshelwood, Cox to name a few played a massive role in keeping us a League One club.

Sure, they are not world beaters but they are League One players and for the majority of the 10 years we have been a League One club. I think they have done astounding job considering:

- We have had no ground;
- We have had no training facilities;
- No finance to speak of;
- London clubs sharking in on our talent (Charlton being one);
- No high grade youth scouts;
- No high grage youth coaches (except Wilkins);
- No real incentives to join us over over clubs.

I think that bearing in mind the above, we as a club have made great use of our limited resources and now is a time to be grateful for what they did during a difficult time and be equally grateful that we have such a bright future.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Fair enough, I'm just looking forward now and thinking that, firstly, we want to progress and therefore need to be looking at pushing the Academy thing, to try and ensure the club is sustainable as much as anything else; and secondly that no matter how many players come through, there are never any decent goalscorers amongst them.

 

[Brovion]

The aforementioned Ian Chapman, Paul McCarthy, Kerry Mayo, and we did have a collection of vaguely competent Stuarts in the early 1990s- Tuck, Myall, Munday.

I may be accused of heresy here, but did Dean Wilkins really do that much for our scheme? Yes, he put a few of his players in the first team, but none of them have gone on to significantly great things. Hammond & Harding are at the same level as us, Cox, Virgo, Robinson, Hinshelwood, Gatting etc all ended up lower, in some cases much lower. We have yet to see any real stars, with the exception of El Abd last season, and I think it fair to say his improvement has been down to Poyet more than anything else. We were simply used to such dross that anyone who came along and didn't look completely out of their depth was an improvement. I'm not suggesting Wilkins was rubbish, merely that he moved us up from "appalling" to "average" in the production stakes. I don't really see a legacy, put it that way. We have yet to achieve the reputation of being a club that regularly produces players with real potential, merely the occasional hopeful.

I don't disagree. But we WERE appalling so there was progress. And a point of order: Chapman wasn't really a product of our youth system as he was at the old FA School of Excellence at Lilleshall. And some of those others we signed as 'young players' rather than having them since they were schoolboys.

 

[seagull_special]

James Hayter was with us I think!

 

[skipper734]

I don't think you can look at a player of youth/develment Acadamy age and say, "right Son your the striker,get that ball in the back of the net."
Coach them to play, roll of defenders etc. and wait for them to grow if they fancy the job.
Like kissing frogs to find a prince,you have to kiss an awful lot,once in a blue moon one will come along with all his ducks lined up in a row, and discover the secret, whatever that is.
Hardly any of the so called strikers we have had at the club have done the business as well as the little gems that emerge with that magical blend of the right players around them.
The England team is the same, Linaker, Shearer. Every one else is an inside right or left as they used to be called.
I don't know that I have expressed myself all that well, but some of you may get the gist of it.

 

[Fitzcarraldo]

Just to throw another successful product of our youth system into the mix - Russell 'the Norfolk Cafu' Martin.


By product I mean reject.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I know they're like gold dust at any level, and if there was a magic wand to make kids score goals, every club would want one. But it does seem unlikely that out of every player that's come through our club in the previous twenty, thirty years, not one has ever gone on to be a consistently prolific striker anywhere in the Football League. The closest is Jake Robinson, and he blows very hot and cold. Most clubs you could surely name one player they've produced who either hammers them in or at least is regarded as having ability and has gone on to better things...or am I imagining it?

 

[mistahclarke]

Virgs played up front a bit, and him signing for Celtic for 1.2 mil was a big deal at the time I thought. He was an international.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Virgs played up front a bit, and him signing for Celtic for 1.2 mil was a big deal at the time I thought. He was an international.

To be fair, I think most of us suspected some kind of nefarious Jedi mind trick at work when we heard Celtic had coughed up £1.2 million (?) for Virgo

Lovely bloke, had a few good seasons, and that Swindon game is the stuff of Albion legend, but I nearly fell off my chair the day I got a text to say we'd got that much for him. Put it this way, I bet the list of million pound+ footballers that Yeovil Town FC have released in their entire history stands at....one.

 

[Gordon the Gopher]

Sorry if he has been mentioned but Paul Ifil comes to mind but not sure if he was ever on our books!

 

[Art Vs Science]

It is a little known fact that Lionel Messi was born in Woodingdean and he was on Albion's books before being released to Newell's Old Boys in Argentina after his tycoon father acquired a Maize and wheat factory there and needed to move at short notice.

 

[Fitzcarraldo]

I don't think that it is uncommon for a club such us ours that has spent the majority of the last 20 years in the third and fourth tiers of the football league, working on a generally small budget, never to have produced a successful goalscoring striker. The strikers that largely make it at the lower league levels and then go onto bigger things, I suspect, are rarely products of the lower league clubs youth systems - they are merely given a chance by those lower down the league scale having been released by a larger club.

The root cause must be put solely down to money, as it is this which allows the creation of scouting networks and academy systems that cultivate your 20 goal a season man. With the investment in youth set up and training facilities that we are putting in - I will look forward to seeing a prolific homegrown striker in the near future (hopefully).

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I wonder if strikers are born (although technical skills can be honed in training) rather than coached. They tend to strike on instinct which cannot be coached.

 

[Spunk Bubble]

Martin Lambert showed promise back in the 80s as a youngster but once he was put in the 1st team he was utter gash

 

[JJB]

Creating an academy might not be that advantageous to you if the FA's plans go through. It would mean the academies would be split up into categories with most teams in the Prem and NPC being categories 2&3. There will be five category 1 teams, two of these in the 'South & London'. These would be us (Southampton) and Chelski. One of the advanteges of being category 1 is that we would not be impeded by the '90 minute rule' which is currently imposed where players have to live withing 90 minutes of the football club, academies outside of category 1 will still be affected by this rule. The idea of this would be to have all the best young English talent training and playing together from a young age which should help the national team. These plans however have not yet been passed though and until they are the same protocol will stand.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Is it just coaching qualifications that differentiate academies from ordinary youth schemes?

 

[seagull_special]

I don't think that it is uncommon for a club such us ours that has spent the majority of the last 20 years in the third and fourth tiers of the football league, working on a generally small budget, never to have produced a successful goalscoring striker. The strikers that largely make it at the lower league levels and then go onto bigger things, I suspect, are rarely products of the lower league clubs youth systems - they are merely given a chance by those lower down the league scale having been released by a larger club.

The root cause must be put solely down to money, as it is this which allows the creation of scouting networks and academy systems that cultivate your 20 goal a season man. With the investment in youth set up and training facilities that we are putting in - I will look forward to seeing a prolific homegrown striker in the near future (hopefully).

Bournmouth have had a conveyor belt of strikers Pittman, Vokes, McQuoid and Danny Ings seems to the latest model

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

There are loads of players - not just strikers - who looked good in the youth system but didn't hack it in the first team. And the same can be said for many other clubs.

That's why I think that the development squad could well be THE best idea that Gus has brought to the club.

 

[The Large One]

He did, pity he made his name elsewhere.

He didn't. He came through QPR's.