What I never really understand is the contradiction that exists in what many say. On the one hand they want to take it back to the mid 90's, where you had a mix of age ranges and older players mixing with younger ones. Yet often the same people will moan that our team is too old, we need more younger players in it, senior lads like Pennington shouldn't be getting a game, reserve football is not for players who are 23/24. It seems a bit contradiction to me.
My own view, is there is no magic solution for younger players. No magic bullet. 90% of players in our academy will get nowhere our 1st team and aren't even a consideration, but you need 11 to make up a team, and 16 for a match day squad. Whether you loan players or not, is sort of incidental.
I'll probably contradict myself a bit here, but what players need is regular minutes, at the highest level possible. I get the argument that they stagnate in the 23's, but players also stagnate when going out on loans. We've seen it ourselves here, Dowell, Kenny, Connolly, Williams etc all going on loan to the same level and ultimately finding that level. Yet some will blame this on "bad loans" without ever really outlining what a "good loan" looks like- before a player is sent (hindsite is 20/20).
What you are really looking for from a 16-18 year old, are the ones who will show exceptional development potential. The one's who when they go on loan, will shine and move onto the net challenge easily.
To circle it back, I'm not really sure returning to the 90's would help that much. I don't think anymore players really got developed in those days to now.
