And yet Jack Lester remains employed by Sheffield United.
2 years ago
2K
A travesty to be honest. Least we've kept Reidy.
Riley Harbottle permanent move to Hibs. Bit of a surprise, Brennan's bestie and I had thought very well regarded and considered capable of playing at top level. Good loan at (Mansfield?). Good luck lad.
Considered by whom? He’ll be 23 and 8 months next May, if he was good enough to play for a top level club, wouldn’t one sign him?
I'm not questioning it; clearly he's not rated as highly as I thought. 23 is pretty young for a centre half though.
He had some big injury problems between round 18 and 21 that held him back. Still a potentially excellent player, which hopefully this move will help bring on. He needs the move and I would presume we got little money but have a big sell on percentage.
This.
I think in the Championship, we might have given him a go, but having seen the huge jump in quality from Championship to EPL, and our relative lack of quality compared with the rest of the EPL, we simply cannot afford to give a young player a run of games to make mistakes and get up to speed.
A Championship loan might have suited us, but he's 23 and really needs a permanent home.I agree and also why I think the academy products have to improve if we become an established PL club. I do wonder how many PL players it has produced over recent years, it only seems on a par with someone like Leicester.
Despite being a grade lower than Leicester through that time, in a lower league and receiving considerably less investment? Impressive.
Their fans think their academy is a bit meh. Ours think ours is the best thing ever.
Maybe it’s because we are so used to being crap that the expectations are low.
How many Premier League standard players has it produced and how much money has it generated in the last decade or so? I suspect our track record is much more impressive than theirs.
Ours has almost literally kept us in existence at points in the last 2 decades... you can see how people might grow quite attached to it.
Not to say it can't be improved, but I think expecting regular PL-level talent from an Academy that was Cat 2 until recently might be a bit unfair on your part.
We also currently have two academy products in our first team. Which is excellent for a team at the level...and better than, say, Manchester United...who have much higher investment and access to better talents.
The academy has done brilliantly...in part because we were at a lower level. It's much easier to bring academy players through when you are not at the highest level, and have that level of scrutiny and game day expectation.
Three. Johnson, Worrall and Yates. As well as Cash, Osborn, Lascelles and Darlow also all in the Premier League, albeit not all regular starters.
..I stand corrected. My point really was that more than one is excellent for the level.
Chilwell went for about £50m, I think. Barnes will be not far short of that and Dewsbury-Hall would raise a pretty high fee if they sell him as well.
