The quote is a bit misleading; it's just taken from his recent interview but the full bit is:
"On working with individuals, Stone added: “I am a big believer in trying to improve the players we have got here. We have got some really good young players. You can talk about Jimmy Garner, Patterson, you can still talk about Dwight McNeil being a young man, Branthwaite has come back in from his loan spell.
“There are so many young players here who we have got to develop and work with. Our job as coaches is to try to make those players better so we don’t have to go out and buy those kinds of players.”
So it's not academy players being referred to.