Academy

[rbr 1,270]

Not a knee jerk reaction , but more over an ongoing issue , just what is the point of us having an academy if the players are never given a chance .

 

no matter how highly rated these kids are they never get a chance on a consistent basis to play , we dont have a reserve league , the B team , hardly play , we would be better of just scrapping it as we are just going to keep buying young foreign players instead of giving our own youths a chance.

[Rousseau 10,825]

It must be because they're not good enough. 

 

I've always been a fan of scrapping the academy and going full B team (like Brentford did): use our relative financial muscle and hoover up all the young talent in Scotland, and those that are not quite making it at elite sides. For this to work we'd need to allow the b team to play in the pyramid like every other top footballing nation. 

 

 

[RANGERRAB 3,772]

Dont we need an academy to play in European club competitions?

[der Berliner 3,820]

Since the English league sides probably face a similar "problem", unless the "EPL u23" (if they have it) is a success, why not set up a league structure for them? That is, a way to give them challenges against talented / quality sides rather than Lowland league footballers? Set up a northern British league, and a southern one, and have play-off at the end of the season for the u23 championship title.

 

Our biggest problem under Walter and his followers was that we bought far too much "quality", and thus hardly ever gave any talented youngsters a real chance to progress. And IMHO, most young talents grow better by playing with equally talented "veterans" / first teamers. Lowry showed up quite brightly, yet we send him packing to Hearts rather than keeping him, now he's essentially done. I have no idea what the problem with McCausland is, who was fully dumped after the arrival of Cerny. Probably more to do with Clement than McCausland himself. (Mind you, I'd put him in behind Cerny during such affairs like Sunday's or vs Dundee at home. No use having a RB there who fails to cover and hardly provides much these days bar consternation.) Mind you, we rather play Bajrami on the wing, or Hagi, than real wingers.

 

The problem remains the same as always. We don't rear truly talented youngsters in the way we should, back in the days of Walter because there was no necessity. Nowadays because of structural failure or ignorance on part of the managers.

[ranger_syntax 4,424]

We can get rid of it easily.

 

If we do that then a fun game will be to wait until the very next match where we drop points.

 

Open up any forum and all you will find is bleating about how we should have an academy.

[Whosthedado 1,709]

We play the same formation, with the same tactics with the same players, week in week out - so an academy is more pointless than it ever has been for a number of years

[ranger_syntax 4,424]

1 hour ago, Whosthedado said:

We play the same formation, with the same tactics with the same players, week in week out - so an academy is more pointless than it ever has been for a number of years

I thought all the clever dicks said that you need a consistent formation for young players to fit into.