Darrell Clarke says

He's unimpressed by the clubs youngsters.. and there's only so many chances they can be given..!
I know it's not what a few on here that think a. 'team full of own grown local lads' want to hear.. But it's the truth and where we are as a club.. shocking recruitment and academy..
Bobby, the buck must stop with him because he's incharge of the academy. That and our recruitment team needs looking at desperately

 

To put it into perspective

With 250 or so teams in the various UK football leagues there are currently 6,000 players on the payroll. The percentage of academy players that make it to a professional standard is in the region of less than 1%. If you were being pejorative you might describe this as factory and a business in its own right. ....
In full
https://www.academyfootball.info/football-academies#:~:text=With 250 or so teams,....

 

Well that's going to boost their morale lol

 

Don't blame him for what he's said (if he has). It's producing next to nothing for the money that has been thrown at it.

 

Clarke is going against the narrative, we were led to believe we had some 'generational talents' which we might have but they aren't at League One level yet.

All talk, that played into the hands of the board in terms of recruitment. I don't know how long they think they can continue bull$hitting the fans. Problem is I think they believe their own bull$hit, which is a problem.

 

I'm finding Clarke to be extremely inconsistent in his expression of views . And also in his subsequent actions. Just a week or so ago he was defending Slonina and Craig, the former for a shocking error. He then went and dropped him.

He's now digging out all of our young players. It could be a case of rolling the pitch for future cost cutting, or he could just believe our young players haven't done themselves justice. It could be a case of tough love to see if they react positively. There's certainly merit in the criticism, but I'd argue playing young players sporadically in a team with poor confidence with little structure and experience around them, and often out of position is a bit stupid. Then criticising all of them publicly, with one or two having made their first team debut... i think that approach is lacking in a lot of ways.

I do think the academy is something that needs assessment given its cost and our financial position. But our general approach, recruitment, overriding strategy and frankly, how we do everything should be under the spotlight. I doubt there are many clubs that would use us as a template for guaranteed success in the year 2024.

 

We know that Man City, United, the Sheffield clubs and Leeds have as many and more scouts in our area than we do.

They hoover up anyone with any level of promise - we get what is left.

I wouldn’t blame Bobby Hassell or many others for that. Though I do question whether it makes it viable for us to have an academy that goes down the ages as far as it does.

We’d be better off picking up the ones that drop out at 16 or 18 maybe - but whilst we are producing the odd gem - Oliver Wilkinson looks to have a good chance - it has to be considered long term as to whether it’s viable whilst the bigger vultures continue to circle this area looking for young players.

 

Over the years it does make you wonder about our strength and conditioning programme/training. We always seem so lightweight compared to other teams and players coming through. We always seem to be lacking in pace, stamina and upper body strength at league level.

 

If we closed the academy would it make a noticeable difference to our regular operation?
Or are we hoping for another John Stones to pop up and save the day, because from what I read on here the up and coming youngsters are not the ones we should be relying on.
By doing away with the academy would it free up funds to allow better purchases into the first team?

 

If I'm a young player at BFC, then I'm ecstatic that our First Tean Gaffer has called me wnk. It'll really want to make me run through brick walls for him.

if that's what he thinks, and he may be right, don't call everyone rubbish in public. Its no good for anyone.

 

To think you can just have this conveyer belt of academy talent where we will be fielding 6/7 of them in the first team is unrealistic.

If £11m (according to Jon Flatman) is spent on first team football and our wage bill is £5.6m there's some serious money getting put into the academy for failure, in 20 years we've produced 1 player that's given us a serious return on investment.

Serious question if you could get rid of the Academy and have a full £11m for first team football would you?

 

Literally just posted similar

 

What exactly has he said? Doesn't seem the best idea to publicly say they're not good enough.

 

I find this a bit insulting to be honest.

He’s not impressed by the kids but when over 6,000 of us spent a small fortune travelling to Old Trafford he put two of them in that both looked miles off it over experienced pro’s.

 

Any chance of a link to said quote?

 

….. and many of them have to move clubs to get a game.

 

Under bus chucked

 

And just maybe the "generational talents" are in the team below.

 

I agree with him. If he has actually said this, then he's right. The bottom line is that we're not getting back anything like what we're putting in.

Players like Dyer, Makiessi, Bland, McCann....I've been hearing these names mentioned for a couple of years now, they play, and there's no noticeable improvement in any of them. Bland as an example, young lad, should be full of energy and vibrancy on the and off the ball... He runs like he's towing a caravan. The quality, which we are constantly told is there, just isn't.

I'd honestly fold the entire thing. Pump all of the money into the first team, have 4 or 5 "younger lads" in the First Team set up and do the layering thing that way.

Having these lads from 11/12/13 years old, all of the money spent training them, employing coaches, all of the costs associated with their matches etc - it's just not worth it.

 

I don’t know when we are going to get something positive from our management team, but has anybody got the number for Samaritans. They need to bloody cheer up.