Got 8 now for Mansfield so one off the top lad who has 9. He wasn't starting games til recently too. Dead chuffed for him. Good to see some other of our old Academy lads making good Football League careers too. Jordan Clark scored yesterday for Accrington. George Maris is a regular at Cambridge. Digby seems to be doing well at Mansfield. George Smith is in League One with Northampton. Makes you wonder whether we let one or two go too soon but it's certainly been beneficial for them to get their careers kick started.
Theres a point where when these lads are not quite making the grade they have to be allowed to get on with their careers and i would expect they would need 1st team football and not just hanging around in under 23s. Also the setup must know that we have players better than them either in 1st team squad or coming through the ranks.
Players develop at different stages, some progress , some go backwards , for example, when George Waring was on loan from Stoke he looked very promising but has since gone down hill , his current club Tranmere have just loaned him out to Halifax after only making three appearances this season & I know he had trouble with injuries but he highlights how things can go wrong
I thought Rose, Noble-Lazarus. Clark & Digby were all poorly handled. All went out on loan way too late & got next to no professional football between 17 & 20
I used to go to the same gym as John Breckin, and his view was that Noble Lazarus was ruined by being pushed into training with the first team squad way too soon.
All the players mentioned are performing at a lower grade...so no. The Stones fee + sell-on alone justifies the academy.
Omar bogle was top scorer at Xmas last season and ended up going Wigan for 1million in Jan. Maybe another club will take a punt on danny rose.
I am of the opinion that Mr Davey has a lot to answer for in that case. Even at the time it felt pretty much like a gimmicky PR exercise to put Reuben in the first team. Everyone could see he had talent, but nuturing it in the Academy was what was best for him, with him maybe being dipped in first team training now and again. As it was, it's likely he was overstretched at a time when his body was still developing. It wasn't as if we were that short of numbers we needed to throw a 15 year old in.
He was released by Rochdale in the summer and is without a club. Hopefully he can get fixed up and make a living out of the game.
He got thrown in too deep too early but then stagnated. Barely played a game between making his debut & half a decade later. Would’ve been better off making his debut a couple of seasons later & then a couple of loan spells.
Simon Davey was a Chelsea style manager. Get foreign players in and sell the raw assets before developing them himself. He was a lazy manager. Good scout but a lazy, lazy manager.
Wilson gave danny rose abit of game time his effort was 100% but just wasn't ready for league one fair play looks like he has dropped a league and it's worked out well for him. Like when Wilson kept giving brad Abbott a chance and he wasn't ready. Some will drop down the pyramid and come back better for it. Danny rose is one.
Rose never got a game in league one. I didn’t think Abbott ever looked up to it on the few occasions I saw him.