Lrrr

Its very well documented and researched that coaches in sport can only recall something like 20% - 30% of a game after it, so how are coaches supposed to know everything about every player in any exact moment? Its simply not possible, when you're talking about match data, physical data etc there's just too much without other people feeding it into him or any head coach.

It’s usually what happens when Cat 1 teams play teams from other categories. Different styles of play in Cat 2 and below whereas Cat 1 is usually very similar and struggles against pace and intensity if they’re not good enough to play through it

Real shame this wasn't played at Ashton Gate, its always a great experience for academy players to get to play in stadiums but more and more clubs now seem to be choosing not to for the youth cup given you actually have to apply for exception not to play at your ground.

15 year old on the bench for Blackburn

Dawson would have been my choice, bringing a bit with the bat as well

I know we’re taking 4 front line spinners but Bashir really England quality? Wouldn’t have said so yet.

Was told every department which worked with the team would have to slash their budgets by 50% if they didn't go up

Well given he almost ruined Ipswich gambling everything on promotion last year I'd say criticism is still fair, he just got lucky this time.

Can take a good few days for games to come online, usually don't have access to forward/recover runs though, more a case of the total distance/running distance/high speed running distance/sprint distance and then the amounts of them as well as peak speed.

His physical data stacks up fairly well against other quick players in the league

A lot do, Sam Pearson is the youngest I remember at the highest level out on loan with Bath when he was still 17.

He's 17 so we wouldn't be sending him out on loan anywhere yet anyway until he's 18, a non league loan like Bath would have been the max.

Add the fact that there's more prospective test match grounds then there are test matches per year so you're not even guaranteed a return.

Perhaps they just don't like wearing City branded clothing while out scouting...? And I agree, a large part that is looked over is that even 5 years ago a lot of City's failed academy players would at best play in non league, now it seems to be every year that more and more are ending up in L1/L2, each of these will retain a sell on to City in future if they do well, so the more we churn out to this level over the next 5 years or so hopefully we could start to see a steady trickle of sell on fee income. Not to mention that its also good that we're helping young lads realise a career path of professional football, some may say 'who cares if its not City' but its still a good thing.

The HPC is plenty fit for purpose, the building is sectioned in first team and academy areas so you don't have crossover, not sure which side the womens team use but will be at times when the first team aren't using the same section. Every academy age group won't be inside, only 18's & 21's will be around day by day and then their pitches along with women and rest of academy (when light) will be based down on the old pitches, the top pitches are first team only barring the show pitch for matches. I won't comment on the 'saving the academy' stuff as I agree players flourished because of talent and opportunity, but take away say Leicester, Southampton etc who've spent plenty of time in the Prem and yes, our training facilities will be right up amongst the best in the league.

They apparently did it for running stories without giving the club a chance to provide their side of it. Having said that I'm not sure Sky are one I'd try and pick on.

Well it’s near impossible to have a squad without it given the average time a manager spends at a club

Played cricket since I was 8 and only got into archery at uni funnily enough because I got a broken toe not getting the bat on a Yorker.

Wonder if Parker would take the job

Think I could have a career in belly flopping archery, ended up being ranked around the top 60 in Britain but it involved a lot of driving due to events being spread around and some hotels for big competitions, whereas now I’d probably rather play cricket and have a good time playing sport with the same group of people week in week out and have a drink at the end.

Yep good luck with that one

Playing sport was one for me, I used to be pretty competitive in a more niche sport, after covid I struggled to have the same motivation for competing at a high level and the training required (being a sport where the more time you put in to training the more you got out of it) and now prefer to play sport for the social side and ended up changing the main sport I played.

I've always said academy teams shouldn't be built around the first team (perhaps U21's aside). When players are younger they need to learn to play a number of positions and roles for their development, he doesn't play for us anymore but an example being Towler, he was a CM for the most part and changed to being a CB as an U18, as a result he's gone on to have a professional career where he may not have if he stayed a CM. Players need to learn to play in a number of different formations and systems. If a player is in the U13's (I believe when they start playing full pitch in academy football) then by the time he's 21 and at the end of the academy system he could have easily had 4 different managers of the first team, imagine the upheaval if you allow your first team manager to dictate the formation the academy plays. You could have 2 really good promising centre forwards and for us lets just use Conway and Bell as an example. Could you imagine if we'd had someone come in and say 'Oh we're only ever going to play with one CF', either one then gets significantly less game time and probably gets released or you share the game time more evenly and both get less game time. Formation needs to be based around the players in your age group. Sure principles of play can change and thats completely different but I've never bought into the idea 'oh the first team plays 352 (for wants of naming a formation) so the academy must play it too'.

I can understand it about football during the covid era, how did it kill it for you once fans were allowed to return?