Oh How Much Are They Hurtin'

[maineflyer 0]

Aidan does talk shite but there's undeniably an element of truth behind his bitterness. The Murray Park investment has seen quite a poor return in terms of bringing through first team players. It's not the facility of course but the people we have running it and the importance the club leadership have placed upon youth development. Like much else about Rangers these last ten years, Murray Park youth development has been a dysfunctional mess. Just one more aspect of Murray's mismanagement that Craig Whyte has to mend.

[Frankie 8,843]

The problem is Murray Park has never been a youth academy but merely a first class training facility.

 

Of course our younger players do benefit from these facilities more than say a Motherwell youngster training on council astro-turf but as others have said without the correct management and specific investment, we're basing our chances of tuition success more on luck than judgement.

[maineflyer 0]

I don't think anyone would claim MP is an academy in the same sense (say) Blackburn Rovers has one. Nevertheless, one of Murray's big claims when opening MP was that it would produce the teams of the future and, like much else from the boaster, that turned out to be 90% bullshit and failure.

 

The good news is that better leadership than Murray could yet make it deliver.

[Zappa 0]

I don't think anyone would claim MP is an academy in the same sense (say) Blackburn Rovers has one. Nevertheless, one of Murray's big claims when opening MP was that it would produce the teams of the future and, like much else from the boaster, that turned out to be 90% bullshit and failure.

 

The good news is that better leadership than Murray could yet make it deliver.

 

You can't take every word he said literally MF. He was talking BS when he said MP would 'produce the teams of the future' because there isn't a top flight team in the whole of Europe which is made up solely of players from their own youth system or academy. What Murray Park has done is more important than what it hasn't done and more important than SDM saying something which was obviously complete rubbish as soon as it left his mouth. Murray Park has helped the 1st team, helped the youth teams, helped friends of Rangers when they come to Scotland and need somewhere to train and last but not least, it's helped facilitate the production of a fairly good number of professional footballers. Not saying there isn't plenty of room for improvement right enough...

[bluedan 93]

This is a pure cheap shot. You can never put a time limit on when youth players will turn good. There's a lot more involved to it other than just having a 1st class training facility. Surroundings, advice,peer pressure, lure of women (guilty) etc etc.

Murray park no matter what people say or think has put us light years ahead even though it might not seem like it just yet. Remember that we are in a very small country in terms of say England.

Also, i'm staying in Argentina at the moment and watch the games here all the time. I reckon i've seen about between 5 to 10 players that i rate as very good but NONE of them special and we are talking about a country whose capital city had almost 3 times the population of Scotland alone. Compaired with 6 years ago the Argentine league had guys the quality of Tevez, Mascherano,Lucho Gonzalez, Lislandro Lopez and others all of whom are better than what is currently in the Argentine league.

 

The facts are this, things go in a cycle. No matter how good the facilites we will NEVER get a steady stream of 5 or 6 players coming through the ranks every season or 2. On the other hand like now we have Cole,Fleck,Ness,Wylde,Hutton and Hemmings coming in as a cluster which is pretty uncommon. We've also had Hutton,Wilson,McCormack,Shagger,Burke,S Smith and i'm sure others who have gone on to do a job for us and then been sold for good profit.

Also, NOBODY can deny that MP wouldn't help improve skills of senior players right the way down to boys and girls.

It also acts as a tool for signing players. It would be a dream to come to work at MP every day and train on surfaces better than some pitches we'll see.

 

With every championship and cup we win, a little of it will be down to the work place. Of that there can be no doubt.