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Youth Team & Central League Thread 2024/25

OB1 said:
Mawene gone as Greenwood’s replacement in the squad?
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Possibly. Could just be set to play 90mins on Monday for the u21s? Would have thought Stewart would be the one to cover Greenwood unless we've picked up an injury or two this week?
 
Bobbage said:
Possibly. Could just be set to play 90mins on Monday for the u21s? Would have thought Stewart would be the one to cover Greenwood unless we've picked up an injury or two this week?
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If it was view to U21s then Wilson wouldn’t be starting either

Maybe Hecky wants another midfielder instead of a striker
 
OB1 said:
If it was view to U21s then Wilson wouldn’t be starting either

Maybe Hecky wants another midfielder instead of a striker
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Keep an eye on what time he gets subbed. With us only having four subs and the likes of Lescott and Tarry missing from midfield this week he could be having to play a game that perhaps he should have skipped?

I reckon Wilson and Kamara will be starting at CM on Monday. Heck seems to think the youngsters are way off the first team going off his pre-match media this week.
 
Bobbage said:
Keep an eye on what time he gets subbed. With us only having four subs and the likes of Lescott and Tarry missing from midfield this week he could be having to play a game that perhaps he should have skipped?

I reckon Wilson and Kamara will be starting at CM on Monday. Heck seems to think the youngsters are way off the first team going off his pre-match media this week.
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He’s right
 
OB1 said:
He’s right
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100%

He's literally said exactly what a lot of us have been saying for years, rather than what the previous regime saw as successful youth progression because they came on for the final whistle.

Bobbage said:
Paul Heckingbottom when asked about the Academy and club's production line;

"I had a conversation with Nick [Harrison, Academy Manager] last week about how do we bridge that gap from the 18's to the first team, because there's no doubt it's big. This is a Cat 3 Academy, so to me the needs of a Cat 3 Academy is totally different and I think that jump from what the young lads face in their games programme to then come and step straight in to the first team programme is really difficult. We need to find ways to bridge that gap. We've got to do that, unless we change the Academy status we've got to do that in the meantime ourselves.

So yeah we've had good discussions about that otherwise you tend to get lost, you'll have players jump up being around the first team but not playing games. What's their programme? What does it look like? And we need to make sure they are the hardest working group of players that's at this club. So we want to put things in place to try and change their programme and deliver that"

Re; timescale & changing the academy status;

"Changing the Category? Oh no, that's out of my remit, I'll not be involved in that. I would lo... I will certainly be advising it and be pushing towards it but I'm not paying for it am I?!"

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Bobbage said:
100%

He's literally said exactly what a lot of us have been saying for years, rather than what the previous regime saw as successful youth progression because they came on for the final whistle.
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Not just the previous (managerial) regime, but the current (boardroom) regime, as we saw from this ridiculous piece of hyperbole in "Craig's" summer statement:

"Importantly, we had a number of our Academy players progress into the first team, with Kian Best, Noah Mawene, Josh Seary and Theo Mawene establishing themselves as a part of the matchday squad during the season. All four getting valuable game time as part of their development."​
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Of course, Seary for one is now busy "establishing himself as part of the matchday squad" at Larne in NI, by being a regular unused sub there, ahead of being released this summer, the standard endpoint on our youth pathway when the IoM are paying.
 
Of course we’ll get some saying they aren’t good enough. They might not have been good enough anyway but when your development stalls because you’re not playing any football in your late teens we’ll never know what might have happened to them if they’d been looked after in a different way.
 
wld said:
Of course we’ll get some saying they aren’t good enough. They might not have been good enough anyway but when your development stalls because you’re not playing any football in your late teens we’ll never know what might have happened to them if they’d been looked after in a different way.
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While this is true, it's also a feature-not-a-bug of the way our academy is set up.
 
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