My view is that LJ had the option to play Academy players, but between him, MA and SL, chose to go and bring players in from outside….Marinovic, Rodri, anyone???
Players like Joe Morrell, stopped from going out on loan in January, having made a few appearances…never then made the 18. The argument will be “well he’s at Pompei now, he obviously wasn’t good enough”. The counter is, was Towler, was Bell, was Conway, etc, when they came in.
From memory, the only academy player that really broke through was Lloyd Kelly.
LJ had the opportunity the blood academy players, but imho, he decided to go a different route.