sten_super
Brain Surgeon
Again, I agree in principle. I don't expect young players to come into the team and hit the ground running from their debut. But Tommy Fraser played SEVENTY-EIGHT times for us. In 78 matches I'd expect to see more evidence of talent than I did, even only in glimpses.
Now, I'm not massive fan of the youth system, but in Elphick, Cox, Virgo, Lynch etc, even we (as a mediocre third division club) have produced players that HAVE shown talent and worth to the team from very early in their career AND maintained it. For me, those sort of players are the MINIMUM standard we should be looking at now, and Fraser is a long way below guys like that.
I think your eye for a player is in fact pretty good. I think it's probably the extreme terms (as expressed by edna earlier) that give rise to the strong responses you receive.
It's certainly a fair point about Fraser's 78 games. I suppose my view was he was (probably) fairly cheap and may have been worth a punt for another season. We certainly have to draw a line somewhere, and taking Robinson as a completely random example, we probably came to that conclusion later than we should, so perhaps the Fraser case is a response to that.
I think, in your evaluation of our youth products, you are being overly harsh. I would agree with Cox, but of the others, Virgo was sold for £1.5m (okay he wasn't worth that, but was a decent Championship player all the same), Lynch has had a reasonable season in the Championship, and Elphick has been linked with much bigger clubs, so I think they are more than we can expect (certainly as a minimum) from a mid-table League 1 club. Which is what we are at the moment (and were at best when these players joined the youth scheme).