Hoop Blah Interesting debate and some enlightening opinion and stats there too.
To my eyes the Academy has been, largely a success, especially that Pearce/Henry/Karacan generation but, like a lot of things, as the club has succeeded and grown some of these have changed along the way. As the club moved up into the Premier League and competed more at the top end of the Championship so the Academy had to change some of it's operations and, specifically, widen it's recruitment net and attempt to raise it's standards.
No longer were we looking to bring in (or able to attract) young players who'd be able to supplement a top League One/mid-table Championship side but it changed into top Championship or mid-table Premier League players. Logically that means we won't have as many proper local lads making up the youth sides and also it means making the side becomes progressively harder.
At the same time managers have been under more pressure to gain results and that often means youngsters get less of a chance and have to be that much better to get and stay involved. Throw in all the disruptive change around the club over the last few seasons and I think the Academy has still done a pretty decent job of feeding some talent into the first team squad. This isn't just applicable to Reading. Young players not getting enough of a chance in first team football is a problem throughout the game right now and is, IMO, the biggest hindrance to player development up and down the country.
I'm a big fan of the less tangible aspects of the Academy as well. It should be a great way for the club to engage with the local community and keep it's roots more local. The growing size of the Academy probably helps that, although I'm not totally convinced by the pyramid structure that Academy's have introduced which sees the development centres becoming a revenue stream to help fund the elite sections of the Academy. That's almost exploiting the dreams of young kids and their parents, but probably a necessary evil.
Following on from this, it has been interesting seeing what has happened with Bournemouth.
The policy over the past few years is to buy young players that have already shown ability, Lewis Cook at Leeds, Tyrone Mings at Ipswich, Jordon Ibe at Liverpool,Josh king at Blackburn, Callum Wilson at Coventry,Brad Smith at Liverpool,Ryan Fraser at Aberdeen, Nathan Ake at Chelsea, Lys Mousset from France, Benik Afobe from Wolves plus a few other youngsters at less money such as the England U 21 keeper from Sheffield United,.
(BTW the total cost of those came to in excess of £70 million).
Prior to their recent exalted status and wealth there were always at least one or two home-growns in the side.
The complaint from fans locally has been that there are no longer any home-growns and Eddie has been at pains to point out in the local Press that it is difficult to promote players to the Premier League and most of the youngsters go out on loan.
So, even with the team in mid- table of the Premier League fans are reacting in the same way as most fans in that they want this local or home-grown link to the players.
Conversely Saints fans want their club to bring in a few more outsiders to augment those that come through the system and recently only Ward-Prowse and Jack Stephens are semi-regular in their starting line-up with more and more of the youngsters out on loan.
I suppose it comes back to connection with the club which fans want but with more and more foreign players coming into our game the young ones aren't getting so much of a look-in and maybe they should be looking to play abroad to gain more experience as well as going on loan to lower level clubs here.
