Super Carr

This blog has an ongoing discussion about our Academy.
I usually take the stand of questioning the West Ham unique ability to produce young talent, arguing that many teams, not only us, have a prolific youth policy.
Prince H certainly advocates the common (nothing condescending in that!) idea that we are the Academy of Football and that we are very special in that sense.

I think maybe it has been made a bit too much out of the golden generation of Rio, Lampard and Cole. If we then add Carrick (that came at the age of 15) and Terry (that left at 14) we seem to get the best of both worlds. That pretty much goes for Glen Johnson as well.
ManUre had a decent bunch with Giggs, Beckham, the Neville brothers, Scholes, Butt, Savage et al. but are not claiming the same status. Ah well.

Now the SUN ARTICLE about Tony Carr does talk in favour of the Prince being right, you be the judge of that. It hails a true West Ham hero undoubtedly more important than most of the players he has guided through the academy ranks. He also makes a good point in that the people finding the talent is also to be acknowledged, a task that is of utmost importance, now also on an international level (a la Arsenal), if we are to keep introducing youth players in our starting XI. We seem to be on the right track there, as Prince H has pointed out, with quite an international group in the youth program.
Tony has his job cut out for him!

Our 3 international summer signings

Filip Modelski, the 17 year old Polish full back suffered a knee ligament injury during the Academy Christmas break that will keep him out of the U-18's for the rest of the season.
Modelski was one of three foreign youngsters to join our Academy last summer.

Another member of that trio, Hungarian striker Balint Bajner, who has had some injury problems this season, is also out for the U-18 clash against Ipswich tomorrow due to a sprained ankle.

The third summer signing of a youth international, Icelandic U-21 player Holmar Orn Eyjolfsson has established himself in the reserves and is according to reports putting out some decent displays.

Youngsters out of the Cup

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

The West Ham Academy - our future?

After today's defeat against Chelsea the Under 18's are bottom of FA Premier Academy League Group A.
West Ham, the producers of young talent, bottom of the table?

It didn't make sense to me so I tried to find an explanation.

So we aren't the home of all future talent, but...
West Ham is still the producer of English talent - right?
In the West Ham U18 4 out of 23 are non-British. I started to look up the nationalities of the players of some other academies in group A.

It turned out that Arsenal had 12 foreign players out of 28! Brilliant, I was on to something!
But after finding that also slumping Chelsea was 12/22, whereas Charlton 2/20 and Fulham 3 of 13 I realized that there was no such easy pattern to be found.

Could it be that we produce the "creme de la creme", but our average isn't any better than the others?
I took a look at the latest U18 national side.
Disappointed! Only Spence (OK so he's the captain) is from our club whereas 3 were ManUre while Palace and M-boro had 2 players each in the squad.
Getting desperate I took a look at the England U19 and U17 sides but it was no better, actually we're not represented in the U17 side at all at the moment!

So these things go up and down -right?
Right, but at this time, when talent is starting to be looked for all over the world by more or less every club in the world, making competition for talented youngsters fierce, it is of some importance to be able to show the prodigies that if they come to the famous West Ham Academy, they get to play with the best.

Are we losing this edge of having a great academy?
Maybe not right away, we can still list quite a few active very successful players that were honed by the academy, and we were second in the group last year. And I recognise that we are fielding young players compared to some of the opposition. However, unless we end up with an owner that transforms us to a buying club, this is supposed to be the platform from which we build success.
I'm a bit worried for the future.
(Sorry about the slightly over dramatic pic...)