The Youth / Academy

All About Walsall
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It’s going too well - so, of course, need to dampen that down a bit :joy:

Joking aside, we were having a chat this morning and the subject of the academy/youth team came up…

What is going on with it?

When was the last player to truly break through from the academy - and/or be sold on?

I was struggling to be honest. Keiron Morris? :joy:

I imagine it was Patterson - but wasn’t that about 10 years ago?

Another little issue is probably interconnected but the academy facilities - and our youth scouting network.

I manage/coach my boy’s under 8s teams on Saturday and Sunday. We play in Tier I of Tamworth league (Saturday) and Central Warwickshire (Sunday).

I am yet to see a single Walsall scout at any of our games. Because we play quite high up, and we have lads who have already signed pre-academy contracts at Blues, Coventry and Villa… we get a lot of scouts. The crazy thing is - we even get scouts regularly down from Forest, Burton, Derby, Chesterfield (!!) - as well as all the local clubs - with one notable exception: Walsall.

Second, are the academy ‘facilities’ - which is basically the 4G pitch at the back of the Purple Stand. It’s not the best. My lad has been on trial at Derby, Burton (who have St. Georges’s Park!!), Forest and Blues. They base their academy training at their training grounds, and have domes for them (which, of course, the first team uses primarily in the day). Is this something we want to improve in order to attract better quality youth players? Better facilities? It really does seem very ‘basic’ I must say, from a neutral viewpoint.

What is going on? It’s something I am going to ask at the next focus meeting; but I would like to think it’s something Trivela are working on.

So the question is - is it worth it?

I think it should be - selling on quality youth players is pure profit, really. Should we be doing more on this?

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It’s an interesting topic @Thanatos

I note that Brentford, who are arguably a role model for Walsall scrapped their academy a few years ago

But now as an established premier league club they are building new facilities

I’ve no idea what that means is best for Walsall. Would be interested to hear other views.

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Agree with your post but the biggest problem clubs like us face now is if a player shows even a hint of promise the vultures pick them up off us very early for next to nothing nowadays.

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I said quite a long time back it may be an idea to just knock it on the head and put a bigger focus on recruitment, finding good young players from non league and other places. Because as someone else mentioned, the bigger clubs take all the talent and even if you get one good one, they can take them for peanuts. That has happened. We have also seen the benefits of finding good promising young players who want to get better.

It was counteracted by some saying it is a community thing and would be a big loss. I don’t know about that, I believe it is really expensive to keep an academy running.

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I think it’s about having a strategy.

I don’t mind if we allow our neighbours to spend their time and money casting nets across every grass roots age range and tier if our strategy is to pick up the “ones that get away” by looking at released kids and looking for a jewel amongst dozens of candidates rather than many thousands.

But it has to be a strategy and not a half arsed outcome of not having one. That strategy needs a functioning operation and network. So when say Blues are letting a group of 15 year old lads go, their academy are straight on the phone to WS1 with a couple of names who were borderline. Because other than the supremely talented and awful, nobody really knows how a player will develop between the ages of 10 and 20.

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Thats absolutely the problem - it would be dead easy for FL to bring in a rule that young academy players should stay with their host club until they are xxx age but I fear that would then bring into the mix, the working rights lot and also be classed as impeding their options to develop to the highest level…

If you’re a parent and have nurtured your youngster through footy from a very young age and let’s say they are at a L2 club academy like ours and Villa come calling - what would you do??? Tricky one really…

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I’d say, if you go to Villa, don’t come round here no more :rofl:

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Of course it’s great to have players coming through from the age of 7/8 and into the first team. If we had one player do that every 2 years and sold one for £1m every 2 years too, that’s £500k per year, I doubt the sums in terms of that covering our academy overheads would add up. Probably better to let other clubs do the hard work with more resources and pick lads up age 16-20 who have been released and have something to prove with a good grounding in the game but not quite making the cut at prem/champ level at that age.

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Miguel Llera killed the academy, someone who was portrayed to be doing good work but definitely was not…

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Be interested to know what the story was here. Is he the fella who’s missus was moaning about his treatment on twitter from Fullerton?

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Been dead long Before him

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Id love more of our own players… BUT why cant we be set up to hoover the prem/ champ teams cast offs from Villa/ Dinges/ Baggies and Blues?

Let them pay to train and develop the players and we get the same relationship we have with stoke where we can be 1st inline for any dropouts.

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From what I read in the programme and see on the various videos which are done from time to time there have been massive changes over the past 2 years. Whether these changes result in a supply of youngsters coming through remains to be seen. I notice ,for example, that we have sent a 16 year old out on a work experience loan to Alvechurch and lots of 17 year olds are out on loan playing mens football. Clearly this does not help the youth team but they seem to be getting better results this year. I guess we will not know if this strategy works for a couple of years.
Charlie Wragg and Dylan Thomas appear to be closer to the first team than any of the others.I wonder if we continue to do well whether we will see a “cameo” or two before the end of the season.

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As it happens Leicester City used to have an annex to their academy, in Tamworth, where they trained local promising youngsters twice a week. They also used facilities in Blaby, near Leicester. The bloke who ran it was a regular at Bescot, scouting on match days.
That was all before they went bust, reneged on their debts and started all over again.

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Traditionally (other than Rico who came all the way through ) most “home grown” successes stories have been developed by other (bigger clubs) prior to them being 16 and brought in by us.

Dann - I think was Everton. Patterson was Cov. Sam Perry Villa. I’m not sure if the conversion stats from our 16s in to 18s are available easily - or if the conversion rate of developed by Walsall vs developed by Others

Logic says that in most cases the talented kids end up else where. We pick up the rest. Stevie Cooke and Sean Geddes ended up elsewhere back in the day and were big deals as juniors. Think they were at United before finding their ways back to Villa / Walsall.

I wonder if we are better putting minimum investment in the pre u16 academy and focusing on scouting and knowing what the other clubs have and move quickly to take on what they don’t want.

@Thanatos your points on junior scouting are interesting. I guess it’s a call on what the outlay warrants. Maybe we already thing sod it let the rest pick them up we’ll focus on the released ones ?

If we were to go for it the pitch at the back and the part of car park could be developed. Also why not pick up the field next to Morrisons which after decades of being unusable is now able to be used. All cost driven I’d imagine with a view on how we’d recoup it via the academy / community.

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Bloody hell Stretch. Scraping the barrel a bit to describe Sam Perry as a success :smile:

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Oozing positivity I am @Belphegor

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Feels like the club gave up on it a long time ago, seems more of a service to the community effort rather than one that’s trying to seriously produce players. I don’t know how many paid staff there are but it can’t be many.

I don’t know if significant investment for a club like ours in an academy is even worth it anymore. They can be pinched for pennies by bigger clubs anyway rendering the time and effort pointless. The System is rigged and the only answer would be to stop bigger clubs from stockpiling players but they will never do that.

Us signing young players from Ireland and non league, and picks up from local clubs like Rico Browne is much more cost effective and seems to be the way we will be moving forward.

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