I see Wycombe Wanderers signed 18 year old Christie Ward on a contract from Brockenhurst Town yesterday, this added to signing Worthing winger Jasper Pattenden a couple of weeks back. Ward was not difficult to spot, The Sun carried a story towards the end of last season about two Premier League sides watching him. Add to this Tommy Leigh joining Accrington from Bognor in the middle of last season and now already had his contract extended by a further two years. Joe Adams, an Eastleigh youngster got an 18 month deal at Wigan Wanderers.
I know not all are going to make it big time but how do we miss the talent playing under our very noses. Ben Houses scored his first goal for Lincoln against us at the end of last season having recently signed from Eastleigh. In the Bristol City side against us yesterday was Rob Atkinson who Oxford signed from Eastleigh 2.5 years ago and within 12 months sold onto Bristol City for 2.5 million.
I know we would like some established names coming in but we are not even doing the local groundwork with young players missed earlier and doing the business at 17, 18, 19. I would, off the top of my head, say Jasper Pattendens brother Lucas who plays for Littlehampton Town will soon be picked up, Joe Newton at Havant and W will soon be back with a league club, the 17 year old centre half at Gosport Finley Walsh-Smith is destined for big things and the Eastleigh left back Vincent Harper will be in the big leagues before long. Other league clubs find them in our locality why are we so off the ball?
If only we had a decent academy and a development side
It's been going on for years, John Swift when he was with Portchester being a glaring example
Signing players from that low in the non-league pyramid is a massive gamble that would just get criticised for cheapness if it became policy. We already have Jewitt-White & Bridgeman as young midfielders knocking on the first team door, in a midfield that is indubtably already the strongest area of the team. Not sure why we should want another.
You mention Bridgeman and Jewitt-White but my point is that people like Tommy Leigh, Rob Atkinson, Ben House, John Swift have established themselves. They have proved better than the youngsters already at various clubs and become first team regulars. We do not know how far the two you mention will go, we do not know how Pattenden and Ward will go, but we should not be missing players that are potentially better than youngsters we have had on our books for a number of years. Think Jamal Lowe for instance.
Manager of Cheltenham now is Wade Elliott and Crawley Town is Kevin Betsey. Both have had great league careers, both were in the Hampshire Under 19 Schoolboy side as no league club had picked them up until in their late teens Elliott joined Bournemouth and Betsey Fulham. We missed locals youngsters playing non league then, we are still missing them now.
Eastleigh/ Havant are hardly gambles. Anyway it’s worth it if the kid goes on to become a money earner or first team player. We got Whits and Cams from the armed forces.
(13-07-2022, 10:20 AM)JIMBON Wrote: [ -> ]You mention Bridgeman and Jewitt-White but my point is that people like Tommy Leigh, Rob Atkinson, Ben House, John Swift have established themselves. They have proved better than the youngsters already at various clubs and become first team regulars. We do not know how far the two you mention will go, we do not know how Pattenden and Ward will go, but we should not be missing players that are potentially better than youngsters we have had on our books for a number of years. Think Jamal Lowe for instance.
Manager of Cheltenham now is Wade Elliott and Crawley Town is Kevin Betsey. Both have had great league careers, both were in the Hampshire Under 19 Schoolboy side as no league club had picked them up until in their late teens Elliott joined Bournemouth and Betsey Fulham. We missed locals youngsters playing non league then, we are still missing them now.
All clubs will miss some local talent, there is not room in the squads to sign all the local players that might make it.
Jamal Lowe rather proves my point, he came from Bromley - four levels higher in the pyramid than the likes of Brockenhurst. That is the non-league level where you are far more likely to get potential talent.
I'm sure we would all agree with DC that the club needs a development squad to bridge the gap between the academy and the first team, but that apart I think the academy comes in for more criticism than it deserves having produced the likes of Bass, Mnoga, Jewitt-White, Bridgeman in the current squad and the likes of Begovic, Ward, Wallace, Webster, Pack, Ritchie & Chaplin in recent memory.
But the years in between produced next to nothing.
What we need is a manager with non-league connections……
(13-07-2022, 10:44 AM)bluetagagain Wrote: [ -> ]But the years in between produced next to nothing.
True, but I'll be surprised if the batch discarded by Galgliardi don't eventually produce one or two that make it back to league football. Harvey Rew & Harry Kavanagh the most likely. It's not the academy's fault that they all got kicked out after so much effort had gone into developing them.
And Jimbon, surely the scummers should get more criticism than us for missing players from Eastleigh & Brockenhurst ? Especially as they have a much bigger youth set up. And I thought we did sign Swift ? So we didn't miss him,
we just didn't rate him as a potential player for a a premier league side.
If DC was filling the squad with non leaguers I can guarantee he and the Eisners would be getting pelters on here for lack of ambition and doing things on the cheap
I wouldn’t want the first team squad full of them but 5 or 6 nineteen to twenty one year olds in a development team would be handy.
(13-07-2022, 11:32 AM)bluetagagain Wrote: [ -> ]I wouldn’t want the first team squad full of them but 5 or 6 nineteen to twenty one year olds in a development team would be handy.
It looks likely we will have 5 academy products in a 25 man squad this season ... that's not too shabby.
"You can't win anything by playing kids".
I think my point is slightly missed. I am not saying we should be full of these players, I am pointing out we did not get involved with even one of these despite all being in our surround but the likes of Accrington, Lincoln, Oxford, Wycombe , Wigan did. When was the last time we got a player from within our vicinity, Nigel Attenagana from Havant and W in around 2014 perhaps.
(13-07-2022, 03:22 PM)JIMBON Wrote: [ -> ]I think my point is slightly missed. I am not saying we should be full of these players, I am pointing out we did not get involved with even one of these despite all being in our surround but the likes of Accrington, Lincoln, Oxford, Wycombe , Wigan did. When was the last time we got a player from within our vicinity, Nigel Attenagana from Havant and W in around 2014 perhaps.
Probably because No one is scouting locally or Nationally come to that!
(13-07-2022, 03:22 PM)JIMBON Wrote: [ -> ]I think my point is slightly missed. I am not saying we should be full of these players, I am pointing out we did not get involved with even one of these despite all being in our surround but the likes of Accrington, Lincoln, Oxford, Wycombe , Wigan did. When was the last time we got a player from within our vicinity, Nigel Attenagana from Havant and W in around 2014 perhaps.
Tommy Leigh & Jon Swift were both in our youth setup before being deemed not good enough for where we were then. So we did get involved in two of the four you named. For the other two we were not the nearest league club.
But actually I'm not at all sure our local non-league clubs are of high enough standard to be a regular source of players for us, Atananga was hired in our desperate days so a bit of an exception. But given the Cowleys reputation for attention to detail you can be sure they know about all the possibles even if their scouting trips are at a higher level.
perhaps the fact that we have cleared out the staff pretty much, suggests the Eisners think we should be doing better too?
(13-07-2022, 08:58 PM)Hammie Wrote: [ -> ]perhaps the fact that we have cleared out the staff pretty much, suggests the Eisners think we should be doing better too?
Did they ? I though they mostly resigned, or moved on to better things. And Gagliardi had more to do with any unhappiness than the Eisners.
In fact I'd go so far as to day that the Eisners lack of involvement or interest in the academy has been the one thing they promised in the Guildhall that they have failed to deliver on so far.
OP agree 100%, well weighted point IMO, they won't all be winners but if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the raffle