Jacki

I really admire players and parents who turn down academy opportunities, in my experience very few do as they don’t want to miss their chance. Unless you’re Alex Scott or another kid who stands out an absolute mile, you might only get one opportunity to get into the academy environment and there would always be the worry of ‘what if’ if you didn’t take it. More help and advice on what it’s really like would be useful for parents and kids before they make that decision though I think, although you do usually get a 6 week trial to test the water. Holden keeping his kid out of the system is an interesting one. You definitely see kids who lose their love for the game… they’re training 3 times a week, playing another time and once they’ve done school work have very limited free time. The training sessions are often repetitive and they’re treated like young professionals from a very young age. It can be a real grind and I know of kids who openly say they’ll stop playing altogether if they don’t get a scholarship at the club they’re at because football is just not the same to them anymore. It almost becomes like a second school for them. So it’s not a straightforward thing. I’m glad my lad has done it and overall it’s been good for him but there have been a number of times where we’ve both got pretty fed up with it. As I’ve said before, you need to go into it with your eyes wide open, be realistic with your kid about likely outcomes, and just make sure that they enjoy it as much as they can. Which isn’t always easy.

I would never advise anyone not to go into an academy, but you do have to think of all the possible (and most likely) outcomes and go into it with your eyes wide open. My boy has loved it in the main. He’s made some great friends, had amazing experiences and played against some players who will probably make it to the very top. He’s learnt about resilience, teamwork, how to deal with authority and all sorts of other stuff and he’s had some fantastic life experiences. He’s also a good player who works unbelievably hard on the pitch. Overall I would say that the good outweighs the bad but you definitely need to consider everything before you make the commitment to join an academy.

Football is a brutal environment and the power dynamic is so heavily loaded in favour of the clubs. Communication with players is dreadful in the main from what I see and hear. I know of a second year scholar at one of the local clubs whose season ends next week and he still hasn’t been told if he has a pro deal for next year. I know of another lad who is a second year pro at a Championship club and he hasn’t been told what his fate is yet either. These lads work their backsides off, it’s all they’ve ever known in many cases, and even this late in the day some of them still don’t know it they have a job at the end of May. My own experience is also one of poor communication. Unless you’re one of very few ‘chosen’ players in a club’s academy you turn up week in week out, have no idea what the future holds for you, and have to be where they tell you to be when they tell you to be there often at very short notice. As players and parents you know you just have to accept that’s how it is if you want to be involved, but it’s no wonder a lot of boys are lost to the game when they’re released. It’s very easy to become disillusioned when you put your heart and soul into something, get little feedback or encouragement, and end up getting rejected with minimal explanation as to why. As I say, you know what you’re getting into but it is a brutal environment.

Was just about to post pretty much exactly this. The FA seem to think the answer to everything is do just bung a bit more cash down the pyramid to shut people up, and that will make everything ok. It won’t. Sport isn’t about money, or at least it didn’t used to be. It’s about community, competition, magic and memories. It’s about joy. It’s about shocks and upsets and shared experiences. Not cash. The way the modern world has gone is beyond depressing.

I think this is a horrendous decision. It's been made by the Premier League clubs purely due to their own agenda, without a second thought to the clubs lower down the pyrmamid who can earn life-changing amounts of revenue from a replay with one of the big clubs. I get the argument about fixture congestion, but even that doesn't stack up when you hear that Newcastle and Spurs are flying to Australia about 2 days after the season ends for a money-spinning friendly. It's an absolute nonsense and the top clubs will do anything they can to maximise their own income without a second thought for those lower down. It also takes away some of what was left of the magic of the cup... We were absolutely delighted with the draw at West Ham knowing we had a night at AG, in front of the cameras ahead of us. That got people talking about us in a way that rarely happens to us.... I had messages from people who live overseas that I hadn't seen in years and things like that just won't happen from next season. Football is the worst for it, but all sports are going this way now. It's all about the dollar and the rich getting richer, and the essence of what makes sport so special is being eroded more and more over time. I for one am sick of seeing things like this and it will only get worse as time goes on. Sad.

No Dickie or Vyner today according to the Evening Post Twitter page….

There’s an awful lot to the transition from kid’s football to men’s. Ability is important of course, but there are loads of lads who are at a similar level in academies who go on the have fundamentally different career outcomes. Attitude and hard work mean way more than ability once you reach a certain level. The mental side of it is huge as well…. Suddenly playing in front of 20,000 people after spending your life in front of a few dozen is a massive shift and it’s no wonder a lot of players struggle with that. In my experience, the academy system is pretty brutal for kids mentally. Having seen it at close quarters it’s an incredibly tough environment for a lot of the boys with very little support, despite what they say nowadays about player support etc. I imagine Mbude will have had all and sundry telling him how amazing he is for as long as he can remember and just won’t be prepared for how hard he’s finding things now. I really hope the kid makes it somewhere and doesn’t become another that got away.

Mbude seems to me to be a classic example of a player who is brilliant in age group football (and looking at his career, he absolutely was) who struggles to make the step up to the men’s game. It happens a lot. A mate of mine’s son plays for one of the local academies and as part of his development he went out on a work experience loan to a Southern League team. He couldn’t believe the step up in intensity, physicality and just pure competitiveness, even at that level. The biggest thing for him was that he was playing first team football and that results mattered to people in a way they just don’t at U18s. Mbude is playing about 7 divisions higher than that for us, having never played anywhere near the Championship before. It’s a huge step to make and it’s no surprise he’s finding it hard. As a percentage very few young players, even outstanding ones, actually get anywhere this high up the pyramid. I don't blame the club for looking at him as his youth career did suggest that he could be ‘the one’, but it does seem like this one isn’t going to work out.

Does any modern formation accommodate old fashioned wingers though? 433 tends to have wide forwards who don’t really play that wide, and becomes 451 when out of possession. I’d actually rather 352 in many ways, at least the wing backs can give genuine width if they play their role properly And I’m completely with you on wingers by the way…. Hopefully they’ll be back in fashion again one day once Pep has buggered off and retired Anyway COYR

I’m no fan of Manning but I do think you’re being overly negative here. 352, or whatever variation we’re playing of it today, can be a really attacking way of playing if we get it right. It’s the intensity we play with and the intent we show that will dictate the result and level of performance today. I’m not confident we’ll win and I’m also not confident that we will get at them in the way we did to Leicester on Friday, but if we don’t that won’t be because of the way we’ve set up.

What a load of absolute turd this is. Stop the world, I want to get off….

This whole debate has completely baffled me and the reaction to the ‘flag’ has been as predictable as it has been depressing. In the modern, ridiculously binary world we live in, it seems so obvious to me that you’re going to get a section of society foaming at the mouth with fury about something like this. And then you’re going to get politicians wading in about how disgraceful it all is in a calculated way so they appeal to the angry audience. Maybe that’s what Nike wanted. But as others have said, there really are far, far more important things to worry about than a tiny emblem on the back of a football shirt. I have honestly never been less bothered by anything in my entire life.

I think I know what Manning is trying to say when it comes to emotions… I think he means saying in control and not ‘losing it’ depending on what happens in games. There is some merit in that However, as others have said, emotion is a huge part of football and for fans that’s literally what it’s all about. I want to lose it with the officials irrationally. I want to be furious when I feel like someone has wronged us. I want to lose my mind and leap around like a lunatic when we score a goal. I understand that the players have to be more controlled than I want/need to be, but they’re not effing robots. They need to connect with the fans, they need to get around each other in adversity, they need to respond to the emotion in the stadium. If they don’t, what is actually the point? And how will performances ever be different to the robotic borefests we’re watching at the moment?

Can you be specific about what these positives are? I’m a pretty balanced person and my posting history will bear that out, but we only seem to be heading one way, performances and the style of play are getting worse not better, individual players are regressing…. I could go on. What, specifically, are the positives you speak of?

Yep, it really is. I often find myself nodding along to your posts and this one is no different. I absolutely love this football club but I was chatting to some mates the other day and saying how utterly pointless we must look to fans of other clubs. We’ll most likely stay up this season and finish somewhere towards bottom of the middle third of the league for the umpteenth year in a row. We achieve nothing tangible at this level and, eventually, we have a dreadful season and end up in division 3 having to rebuild again. It feels like that’s exactly what is going to happen now. I’ve been supporting for 41 years and it’s always been the same. Yes, it has been worse. And yes, there are way worse owners out there than the ones we currently have. But it could also be so, so much better and it’s so depressing to see us falling into this doom spiral yet again with nobody at the club who will a clue how to run the club to change things for the better. Heavy sigh.