Fulham youth onus

[Barrett487]

Is it my imagination, or do we only produce attacking/midfield starlets?

Maybe we need to focus on a youth coach or two that have defensive abilities?

When was the last time a FFC youth player broke through to the first team? Paul Parker?

[Robbie]

The reality of the PL is that clubs would rather hire mediocre foreign players than promote young keen home grown players.

[davew]

Is it my imagination, or do we only produce attacking/midfield starlets?

Maybe we need to focus on a youth coach or two that have defensive abilities?

When was the last time a FFC youth player broke through to the first team? Paul Parker?

Ryan Sessignon at left back?

[Milo]

Guess Smalling but that's going back 8 years and technically wasn't our youth team..

[AnOldBrownie]

The reality of the PL is that clubs would rather hire mediocre foreign players than promote young keen home grown players.

That's not true of Manchester United...and to a lesser extent Fulham should follow United's model.  imo.

[filham]

Sess of course but then you have to go right back to Saun Davis.

[hovewhite]

Sess for sure and think he should be there instead of bryan.

[bobby01]

Matthew Briggs.?

[RP24]

The Sess Twins are an obvious example although Ryan definitely is more attacking nowadays.

Depending on how you define broke into the first team, Cameron Burgess, Jack Grimmer and Matt Briggs all had short stints in the first team.

[Sting of the North]

The reality of the PL is that clubs would rather hire mediocre foreign players than promote young keen home grown players.

That's not true of Manchester United...and to a lesser extent Fulham should follow United's model.  imo.

Genuine question, but in what way has Man Utd promoted young keen players to a much larger extent than many other PL clubs in the last decade? I know that Rashford is playing regularly, but who else really? These are not exactly the days of Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and the Nevilles anymore is it? Southampton on the other hand has been very successful not so long ago I believe.

[AnOldBrownie]

The reality of the PL is that clubs would rather hire mediocre foreign players than promote young keen home grown players.

That's not true of Manchester United...and to a lesser extent Fulham should follow United's model.  imo.

Genuine question, but in what way has Man Utd promoted young keen players to a much larger extent than many other PL clubs in the last decade? I know that Rashford is playing regularly, but who else really? These are not exactly the days of Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and the Nevilles anymore is it? Southampton on the other hand has been very successful not so long ago I believe.

You're right.  Thanks to mercenary managers like Jose and Luis before him (Rashford only played beause of injury)...United got away from promoting youth.   

The current idea is that the likes of Angel Gomez, Chong and now Mason Greenwood will hopefully have 1st team opportunities and United will get back to it's roots of promoting youth in it's squad instead of signing so many established foreign players.

[aaronmcguigan]

Being in the premier league and generally in a fire fighting position, it's not always been possible to use youth consistently. I would however argue that if we are using the likes of Cisse, Kebano and Ayite, I don't see how bad we can get to throw one or 2 young ones in.

It could be argued that Sess' development was accelerated due to being in the championship. He would have made it regardless but i doubt he'd had 100 appearances if we were struggling in the premier league where the natural thing to do maybe 10/15 years was to load the squad with premier league journeymen like Pembridge, Ian Pearce, Sidwell etc. Could it then also be argued that our youth that have fallen by the wayside would have had more appearances if we were in the championship at that time. The likes of Timlin, Leacock, Buari, Rehman, Green, Omozusi, Briggs, Milsom, Hoesen, Trotta, Plumain, Tankovic

They are just an example of players that we could have used more. But you need extra cup games, European games and bolder braver managers to make a success of the academy, something which we have had at the wrong times.
However, Sessegnon aside, I believe we haven't utilised the academy anywhere near as much as we should have.

[aaronmcguigan]

You're right.  Thanks to mercenary managers like Jose and Luis before him (Rashford only played beause of injury)...United got away from promoting youth.   

The current idea is that the likes of Angel Gomez, Chong and now Mason Greenwood will hopefully have 1st team opportunities and United will get back to it's roots of promoting youth in it's squad instead of signing so many established foreign players.

You speak of them as mercenary managers however they both managed to win silverware while bringing through Rashford and McTominay for example and if any of the 3(Chong, Gomez and Greenwood) make it anywhere near the first team on a regular basis, a lot of the credit will be due to Mourinho having them in and around the first teams this season and last.
Sure a lot of teams are doing more re youth but Mourinho and co done their bit