The U-18 lose in the first round for the second year in a row when the princes of Nottingham grabbed the victory in the FA Youth Cup yesterday.We are now out of that cup too, as conceding 3 goals and bagging one (Ahmed Abdulla 77') usually have that effect in a cup.
The team is reported to have had the initiative for much of the game without being able to convert it into anything - sounds a bit like the first team a couple of games ago.
West Ham: Street, Modelski, Brown, Brookes (McNaughton 81), Fry. Kearns (Abdulla 62), Okus (Grasser 71), Lee, Montano, Edgar, Bajner. Subs: Loveday, Hall.
How shall I put this...
I don't want anybody to think that I am, in any way, blaming any individual youth players, and it's just one game, but I think this at least is not contradictory to my thesis that our Academy at the moment is not a great force in English youth football.
Prevous post on this topic HERE
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4 comments:
U take every opportunity don't u? ;-)
Well the Arsenal youngsters lost as well...
Stanislsas scored two the other day. And Jordan Spence was immense for his team. Well, well....
I think I have a decent case and I think we should worry about this.
Arsenal have 29 points in the Academy Group A, West Ham have 13. Arsenal may claim a bad day at the job (or school), we can hardly do that.
Arsenal also started with 7 players under 20 in the Carling Cup last night including 17 year old Jack Wilshere!
The argument that we have a few of our best youngsters in other places than in the U-teams holds true for a lot of teams, not just us.
We may not have the best U19-team in the world. We may not have it in England even. And I don't expect us - even as the proud Academy - to have it more often than maybe every third decade. But I think Tony Carr does a great job, still.
You may, like Brooking and others, worry about all the England youngsters who prefer to play Playstation or X-box games instead of kickin a ball on a rainy field all days after school. Which will affect the National team, more than the Clubs. I don't care about England as a national team.
But as I've said before, it takes time for anyone to build a new team and Carr is doin that right now. In the team there are talent like Street, Abdulla, Bajner, Lee, Örn and young Hall. And as we all know we have talent in the same age outside of Carrs group. It may be so that we can't field the strongest young 11 in England at the moment (the top four clubs do nowadays bring in their talent so young that they still wear dipers. It affects the other teams lik ours as well). I give you that. But I'm not worried of losing a game against Nottingham as we seemed to dominate it totally, only the lack of goals this evening stopped us from the next round. As you've said before - that is a problem we are used to.
But this looks like a quite abstact discussion as I haven't seen any of these new young talents (Except for Bajner on telly) on a field. I don't know if you have....
Butas we are talkin youth. Tomkins and Payne had excellent games yesterday. Or at least we can read so...
I am sure Carr does a great job whith what he's got.
I do think when you say "West Ham Academy" most people picture something that is is good more than once every 3:rd decade.
But I think you are right, so we should strive to do something about it.
This is our future!
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