It's crossed my mind over the last few weeks and it might just be me but I've grown to be quite concerned over the lack of talents, both nationally and globally, we've recruited or produced in our youth set up.
Now whilst I know it has no immediate impact with our on field troubles but long term it could prove to both effective in productivity and financially.
So who was the last real successful u21 if you like player that was able to make a difference? and I can only really think back to Coutinho....signed for £8.5m as a 20 year old from Inter after having a short stint on loan in La Liga before making a handful of appearances with Inter....he went on to be nothing short of world class for us before getting his big move to Barca some years later for 120m.....a long term asset for the club and ended up both proving effective on the pitch and ultimately financially benefitting...that then led to the signings of Ali Virg etc and the rest is history. Edit - Another good example was Sterling....signed as a 15 year old from QPR for 500k, went on to be effective on the pitch and again gained financially to help spur on the squad we see today.
Since then from memory we've gone on to sign the likes of Luis Alberto, Joe Gomez, Allan de Souza, Sepp Van den Berg, Dom Solanke, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and now Calvin Ramsey & Fabio Carvalho....none of whom have been inspiring recruits...or yet to be at least.
Simple question is why haven't we been able to produce bigger talents from our academy or recruit better talented players from other contingents like Africa or South America?
Now whilst I know it has no immediate impact with our on field troubles but long term it could prove to both effective in productivity and financially.
So who was the last real successful u21 if you like player that was able to make a difference? and I can only really think back to Coutinho....signed for £8.5m as a 20 year old from Inter after having a short stint on loan in La Liga before making a handful of appearances with Inter....he went on to be nothing short of world class for us before getting his big move to Barca some years later for 120m.....a long term asset for the club and ended up both proving effective on the pitch and ultimately financially benefitting...that then led to the signings of Ali Virg etc and the rest is history. Edit - Another good example was Sterling....signed as a 15 year old from QPR for 500k, went on to be effective on the pitch and again gained financially to help spur on the squad we see today.
Since then from memory we've gone on to sign the likes of Luis Alberto, Joe Gomez, Allan de Souza, Sepp Van den Berg, Dom Solanke, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and now Calvin Ramsey & Fabio Carvalho....none of whom have been inspiring recruits...or yet to be at least.
Simple question is why haven't we been able to produce bigger talents from our academy or recruit better talented players from other contingents like Africa or South America?
