Chris Wood

Looked awful for us on loan in 2010.

8 goals in the Premier League this season & has fired Forest up to third.

Sometimes it takes time for players to come good. Maybe we should be more patient with our young players?

 

What was he 18 , 19 when he came to us? Very little league experience as well after coming over from New Zealand? Can't imagine standard being very high - fair play to him - he's worked hard and he's come good! Made up for him

 

Didn't he get subbed in the first half for us in one game?

 

He's done well fair play to him. Sometimes we get a young player at 18 and people think he should be scoring for fun in misters football look at players like kieffer moore was kicking a ball about for Truro City at 18/19 and hasn't had a bad career.

 

Yes I think he played up front with Chris O’Grady on his debut. Wood was having a shocker & Keith Hill took him off after 30 mins if I remember correctly

 

Forest going well and plans for a 40/50k stadium

 

We definitely need to have more patience with our young players. The problem is we seem to discard them quickly after spending so much money developing them and we replace them with older players who are still very inexperienced and weak for the first year but we still give them more chances

 

Wood and O’Grady played at different times, neither under Hill. Wood was a Robins player and O’Grady signed under Flitcroft. I think it might be Garry O’Connor about that time though.

 

I’m sure it was Leicester at home in 2010/11 and Robins hooked him on half an hour. Paul Hayes too if I remember correctly. Lost 0-2.

 

Aye he's been premier league quality for about 4 years now - exactly when strikers usually hit their primes (excluding the very elite obviously) done extremely well for himself

 

You can't say that we're not showing patience with Jalo.

Who else recently have we dustbinned to our own cost?

Marsh keeps getting first team nibbles - you are a fan of his - do you think that we should give him more game time?

I'm not a scout but i think that we all can see whether there's a semblance of promise in a player who turns up in the first team, even if they struggle at the start.

Jogiey looks most likely to make it.

In the meantime plenty of posters on here think that we ought not to be playing in minor games/competitions, nor assessing how youngsters perform in them. No patience or perception at all.

 

I absolutely disagree with this mate. We are mostly clueless. Weve called out god knows how many youngsters and they've gone on to have brilliant careers

 

Well firstly I'm not one to call out a youngster anyway - that is completely wrong and almost unforgiveable because it's their livelihood and their dream.

However generally speaking i don't think that we've produced much at all from an academy, and I don't think that we've denied them chances either - we're desperate to make money out of them at the end of the day.

I think you're pushing it with "brilliant careers" - we got our coin from the majority of the best ones.

 

I'm not just on about from out academy bud. I'm on about loan spells. Even some players we buy who are a bit older. Dike got wrote off after 30 minutes against Chelsea and turned out to be great for us, shame about his injuries. Mads too, he was poor that first season and our fans gave him some right stick. Hourihane that first season got stick. I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have been criticised but there weren't many among us who thought they'd turn into the players they did (I'm including myself btw)

 

Awful loanee for us. One of our worst up there with Deon Burton, Brek Shea and many others.

He's had a really good career but it took him a long time to peak.

 

Well i don't think it was too hard to see promise in Dike, and anyone who concludes upon the merits of a striker after half an hour is without doubt an ass. Mads I thought would come good - eventually although a few didn't. And one called Supertyke still thinks he's crap. Conor I did think was mediocre to kick off with but he came through big style.

But then again these players are there to be assessed. The younger players need patience. I still maintain that 2 or 3 games is all it takes to judge upon whether the seed of potential is there to be sown.

 

I'd say there's a lot of young lads that have come through the academy over the years who have been largely ignored in order to play either young lads on loan from other clubs (see Danny rose being ignored in order to play frank double from west ham) or who have been ignored because they didn't immediately look up to it but we've persevered with older players who also didn't seem up to it. Sam Cosgrove for example has shown nothing more than jalo or marsh yet hes featured a lot more than either of them. If they were all 20 year old academy graduates I guarantee he wouldn't have had the game time he has.

It just seems that over the years we've signed or brought through a lot of young players who showed promise but either never got a chance at all or didn't set the world alight immediately so just never got a real run of games and were eventually moved on but we filled their place in the team with loanees a million miles off being ready or we've given chance after chance to an older player who wasn't cutting it.

We market ourselves as a club who will help develop a player and then move them on to a bigger club to further their career but in reality we only do that with players signed at a certain stage of their game. If I was a 17 year old lad I wouldn't come anywhere near oakwell because I wouldn't ever be given a run of games as I'd just be constantly told I'm not ready. Meanwhile a 27 year old who's greatest achievement at oakwell is shoving a keeper over would be getting game after game or we'd be giving minutes to an apparent hotshot from Tottenham (despite him actually being very poor for us) and I'd have to settle for the occasional minute in the cup where it doesn't matter how I perform because I'll disappear the week after anyway.

We definitely aren't the only club to do this but it infuriates me that we (and others) judge a player much differently because of their age when we signed them or where they come from.

On the subject of Marsh I think he should have been given more minutes when he first broke through but despite some good performances he was largely ignored. This season he's not been reyt good but again he's only ever been given short periods to do it in, meanwhile old Sammy Cosgrove was given match after match to fall over and cry for a foul that he inevitably wasn't going to get

 

I think you are correct with regard to Cosgrove. But he must have been good at one time. I can just about see how that might have happened. Also Watters - I can see that he ought to be top championship - what stops him from playing to his potential?

Back at the Well, you are right with regard to lots of imported tripe.

But you can't say Jalo hasn't been given a chance. He should continue to be given a chance. I haven't given up on him. Marsh isn't quick enough though - at least at the moment. Probably best for him to play a league or two lower and prove himself.

Regarding the academy, I do not know whether it is the stone or the mason or both that lack the requisite quality.

It's our black hole at the moment.

 

I'd love to know how much the academy actually costs to run. And by that I mean just the youth part of it because obviously the majority of facilities are used by the first team. In other words if we scrapped it would we actually save much? We'd still need a reserve team or under 23s as it's called now