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Everton Youth Teams Thread

Stephenlloyd said:
I think it is all about his own CV, yes it’s great to win but it’s not the main objective of youth football.

The season 17/18 we had no chance of winning the league with 5/6 games to go, probably finishing 4th or 5th was the best we could hope for.
Yet he still kept playing Garbutt, Conor Grant and David Henen, all in there 20’s with no future, 2 went at the end of the season and garbutt who’s about 25 is on loan and will be leaving very soon I would imagine. Why wasn’t some of the under 18’s moved up to Take their places for the remaining games.

It’s like this season, I know we were going for the league, but sambou had no future and wasn’t even that great at under 23. Antony Gordon who is seen as the future should have been playing every week last season in the 10 role, at least the system would mirrored the first team.

And one more thing do we really want Antony Gordon coached under a negative manger fir the next 2 years. It will be all about defending and getting behind the ball. If/when he moves up to the first team, all of a sudden he will be asked to play a totally different way under Silva.
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I've always seen winning the U23 league as pretty pointless, seeing as the gap to first team level is so big. As said above the biggest talents aged 18-21 are in first teams. If you're coming towards the end of that age bracket and are not playing first team football you've arguably wasted the most important years of your career. I think players need to start taking more responsibility themselves and start pushing for playing time whether that be on loan, in the first team or leaving.
 
Nymzee said:
Youth football should always be about development and if you can win then it’s an added bonus. Don’t know how anyone can not see Unsworth doing last season for his CV.
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Do you include Marcel Brands in that, his boss? If you do, we have to assume either he'll be sacked or Brands is an abysmal DoF I think, who can't see what's right under his nose.
 
BornBlue76 said:

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Needed with academy transfer ban I guess..
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That surprises me, this time last year he got a contract based on showing good form in the last few months as an u18, he really stepped up a gear. But last year he barely featured for the U23s and I thought we’d be letting him go. Mind you Broadhead was similar, hardly featured in his first year at U23s then picked up the next season.

The academy ban doesn’t impact the U23s directly as we can sign 19 year olds , as I understand it it’s only 16- 18 year olds from other English clubs it applies to. Maybe Sambou’s imminent departure has impacted the decision.

Good luck to him he’s obviously been showing something in training to have earned it. I just hope that he doesn’t block the path of younger players like Gordon, Simms and Adeydoyin , over the years we seem to have had a habit of holding onto young attackers who are never going to make it with us and in doing so stifle their chances elsewhere Duffus, Dyson, Grant come to mind.
 

Billy Dean said:
I've always seen winning the U23 league as pretty pointless, seeing as the gap to first team level is so big. As said above the biggest talents aged 18-21 are in first teams. If you're coming towards the end of that age bracket and are not playing first team football you've arguably wasted the most important years of your career. I think players need to start taking more responsibility themselves and start pushing for playing time whether that be on loan, in the first team or leaving.
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...doubt many will think they are ‘wasting the most important years of their careers’. You are talking about players who are likely to be on the most lucrative contract of their lives. Very few of them will become top flight players, they are competing for that possibility and for those that don’t come through they are fighting for careers elsewhere.
 
blueloon said:
I just hope that he doesn’t block the path of younger players like Gordon, Simms and Adeydoyin , over the years we seem to have had a habit of holding onto young attackers who are never going to make it with us and in doing so stifle their chances elsewhere Duffus, Dyson, Grant come to mind.
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Yep this! We have definitely created a bottle neck in the U23s.. For instance all the time Simms was plundering the U18s, my feeling is an academy player of his age should be plying his trade by now close to the first team not 2 levels down if he has a chance to make it... but that was also a result of having chaps around who were clearly weren't going up. Management need to (as hard as it is) try determine the ceiling of the player. The higher the ceiling the more they need to be pushed through and promoted in front of players that might be further developed but have reached their max..
 
BornBlue76 said:
Yep this! We have definitely created a bottle neck in the U23s.. For instance all the time Simms was plundering the U18s, my feeling is an academy player of his age should be plying his trade by now close to the first team not 2 levels down if he has a chance to make it... but that was also a result of having chaps around who were clearly weren't going up. Management need to (as hard as it is) try determine the ceiling of the player. The higher the ceiling the more they need to be pushed through and promoted in front of players that might be further developed but have reached their max..
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We should do what's best in each individual circumstance. Some players benefit from being challenged and pushed through, some benefit from staying down at a level where they can learn their game properly. It can be detrimental to players to be pushed up a level too soon, and often stunts development as players become too bothered about bulking up and standing up to physical challenges rather than concentrating their footballing ability.

The only reason for demanding players step up sooner is impatience on the part of fans. Fans love to have a 'star', the next big thing, and saying look at this 16 year old banging them in for the under 23s allows them to do that. Other than that, there's absolutely no reason why a young lad should have to be fast tracked into a higher age group unless they're a truly special case.
 
Eggs said:
...doubt many will think they are ‘wasting the most important years of their careers’. You are talking about players who are likely to be on the most lucrative contract of their lives. Very few of them will become top flight players, they are competing for that possibility and for those that don’t come through they are fighting for careers elsewhere.
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Yeah I guess it depends what you mean by "wasting" . But if a kid is playing U23 football from the ages of 18-21 then the likelihood is that they haven't given themselves the best chance of development
 
Billy Dean said:
Yeah I guess it depends what you mean by "wasting" . But if a kid is playing U23 football from the ages of 18-21 then the likelihood is that they haven't given themselves the best chance of development
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...firstly, they will have dreamed of becoming professional footballers. Secondly, they will have dreamed of being professional footballers at a PL club. Their next aim will be to impress and get a 2nd contract at the club, or be in demand for a career in the game at any level.

It’s so precarious an occupation for kids who are taken on full-time.
 

Billy Dean said:
Yeah I guess it depends what you mean by "wasting" . But if a kid is playing U23 football from the ages of 18-21 then the likelihood is that they haven't given themselves the best chance of development
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Hard to tell really. I think Walsh and Ledson are examples of players who were highly rated in our academy and decided to jump ship to go and prove themselves. That was brave of them, and I commend them, but between the 2 of them they've managed 18 Championship starts since leaving. Have they really given themselves a better platform than say Josh Bowler, who is apparently now in demand from clubs at that level, or Sambou who is supposedly being chased by all sorts of clubs? Adam Forshaw learnt his trade in our junior sides and has had a great career after leaving at 21. It's not a one size fits all policy.
 
JimmyK said:
Hard to tell really. I think Walsh and Ledson are examples of players who were highly rated in our academy and decided to jump ship to go and prove themselves. That was brave of them, and I commend them, but between the 2 of them they've managed 18 Championship starts since leaving. Have they really given themselves a better platform than say Josh Bowler, who is apparently now in demand from clubs at that level, or Sambou who is supposedly being chased by all sorts of clubs? Adam Forshaw learnt his trade in our junior sides and has had a great career after leaving at 21. It's not a one size fits all policy.
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Yes you're right hard to tell and still too early to tell for all of them (except Forshaw obvs). The last time I checked last season (only some Googling and twitter searches mind) Ledson seemed highly rated by PNE fans and was adjusting from a lower level the season before. Hard to say what level he'll reach still. I guess we'll see what happens with Bowler and Sambou too. And we'll never be able to compare how they fare now to how they would've fared if they'd been playing more regular senior football already.
 
JimmyK said:
The only reason for demanding players step up sooner is impatience on the part of fans. Fans love to have a 'star', the next big thing, and saying look at this 16 year old banging them in for the under 23s allows them to do that. Other than that, there's absolutely no reason why a young lad should have to be fast tracked into a higher age group unless they're a truly special case.
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You're right, I don't deny it, but at the same time we ARE hoping to unearth a real EPL quality gem.. to be good enough for Everton you have to be good enough to be close to the National side. You have to be a 'star' to make it these days, or we'll just go buy Richarlison or try get our hands on Moise Kean. We have had loads of Youth Gems recently and many have been sold off to lower division sides or are on the periphery of the first team and don't look like making a sustained breakthrough. Its too easy to go and replace them with a foreign superstar because its not just fans that don't have patience, its the need for immediate results that keeps the Manager awake at night. We need to remember they are competing on an international stage for only a handful of spots.
Your last point is actually very telling.. a truly special case. That is what we are talking about. The flip side of the coin is that in spite us wanting them to be so, those kids being called out like Dobbin, Gordon, Simms etc aren't actually special cases as they can't displace the older boys. I know a big part of wanting to see them pushed is an acceptance that the older boys are not going to make it and hoping those lads are a class above.. it might just not be the case.

Special cases generally break through in spite of who is above them. I expected Ledson to be England Capt and Liam Walsh to be the next Pirlo so what do I know.
 
www.dailymail.co.uk

Top 10 wonderkids 18 and under looking to make their mark this season

With pre-season rapidly approaching, there is a host of teenage talent who know they have a golden chance to make an impression ahead of the Premier League season.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

These are quite interesting but having looked at past predictions like this generally only 1 or 2 end up in PL first teams long term.

Lewis Gibson is our player picked out this year and I think most on here would agree that he’s the most likely to set up next season, possibly Anthony Gordon, this is from the under 18’s, overall probably Joe Williams is the only player that hasn’t already made his debut that could possibly be ahead of these two?

61680
 

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