Kante - looks like he could be away

MVBoro said:
Seems like it’s becoming harder and harder to attract talent and when you have promising players, they often get poached. Not a position unique to Boro. I think a lot of academies are struggling to produce good players. The big clubs are hoovering up all the talented youngsters as well as the senior players.
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This is exactly it. Palmer twins as a prime example.

Poaching of kids should be banned. Academy kids should only be allowed to switch academy if they are released. In fact, I’d go so far as to say transfers of anyone under 18 shouldn’t be allowed (unless released). I guess the law wouldn’t allow that as a rule though as itd no doubt breach some employment right / human right freedom or somesuch.

Edit: transfer meaning permanent as opposed to loan.
 
indeedido said:
There are clearly posters here who are far more in touch with our academy than me. I respect their verdicts.
The question surely has to be why has the academy produced so little in recent years?

I’m not having a go, but the conversion rate seems woeful for a top academy.
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Academy players get poached now a lot more than they used to.
We lost Anton and Bailey Palmer to Brighton at 16 years old - Ajay Matthews went to Millwall, AJ Bridge went to Norwich (then got released), Eric Hamelberg's just went to Stoke.

It's happening too much in the championship now in my opinion.
Preston had a young LB called Kian Best who was just breaking through into the first team, played 13 times in the championship.... He got poached and went to Chelsea U21s on a free.

The problem for the academy as a whole is even when we produce one good player (Law McCabe is a good example), they're still training with 15 players who are not good enough, and the difference in ability is not even close... Most of our academy get released and end up in non-league.

If a League 1 standard player (McCabe) is training/playing with non-league players every week... He doesn't improve, and ends up going backwards.
 
Ravshoutsatbeck said:
The question is whether it is the academy or whether we are not giving enough first team opportunities.

Players need exposure to improve and we have been scared to try them I think.
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The top academy lads get opportunities and exposure in training sessions with the first team. A few too many in recent years have had too high an opinion of themselves without proving to the manager that they deserve to step up.
 
SilentProf said:
The top academy lads get opportunities and exposure in training sessions with the first team. A few too many in recent years have had too high an opinion of themselves without proving to the manager that they deserve to step up.
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We used to have a much more sink or swim approach to the academy (especially during the prem years).

You just have to look at Hackney - he had failed on loan at Scunthorpe - no where near the team with Wilder - thrown in by a caretaker manager with nothing to lose. Learned on the job.

I think the pressure is so high now - less likely to throw players in.

Kante and McCabe looked decent early on last season but weren't given a chance - McCabe was played as a 10 on loan in a poor Plymouth team and lost his place.
 
r00fie1 said:
Fair play. But hes another drain on the wage bill, and no ones telling us we dont have as good if not better players from our own academy? Why do we keep picking up these unproven players from the "bargain bin" ?
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We picked up Djed Spence from the bargain bin. We sold him for upwards of ten million. With more to follow.
We picked up Morgan Rogers for a million. We sold him for 8 million. With much more to follow.

We bought britt assombalonga for 15 million. He left for nowt.
We bought Savile for 7 million. He left for nowt.

Not every player we pick up for a million or so is going to end up with a value of £100 million plus. If it was as that easy everyone would do it. For every Morgan Rogers or Late Lath there will be a three or four that don't make the grade.

Our better academy players get picked up by bigger teams. You get **** all compensation and a weedy sell on fee.

Given the ***** we ended up in, skint, heading for relegation, with Warnock having to bail us out, it's easy to see why we are taking this path. It's certainly not perfect what we are doing. But it's a damn sight better than what we were doing.
 
indeedido said:
There are clearly posters here who are far more in touch with our academy than me. I respect their verdicts.
The question surely has to be why has the academy produced so little in recent years?

I’m not having a go, but the conversion rate seems woeful for a top academy.
Click to expand...
I think there's a few issues:

1)
The gap between academy football and first team football is getting bigger. It's not a problem exclusive to Boro.
More and more foreign players just continues to drive the standard up of professional football.
A lot of lads come out and play Northern League football who would have been good enough to have a professional career 20 year ago.

2)
While we are a Championship club, we are wide open for our top players to go elsewhere. Obviously we've all heard of the Bailey twins going to Brighton recently in a reasonably high profile move, but even younger than that, we see the top talent in the north east choose Sunderland, Newcastle and Leeds before Boro's academy.

3)
I think this is the biggest one.
The north-east is no longer a hot bed of football. There's a much higher strike rate of young footballers going on to become pros from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool etc. Multiple reasons to this.

a) the environment they learn to play. Cage football and similar inner city games are being linked heavily with good early development.

b) access to pro academies. A kid brought up in the North East has access to 4 different Cat 1 academies. If Boro / Newcastle / Leeds / Sunderland don't fancy them they stay in grassroots with a volunteer coach. Leeds tend to recruit heavily around Leeds/Sheffield/Manchester so very few go into leeds from Boro. So you can narrow it down to 3 academies. Approx 40 kids in the whole north east at U9 and maybe 60-70 kids at U15.

A kid brought up in the North West for example will have access to so many academies. If the big ones don't fancy them (Utd/City/Liverpool/Everton/Leeds etc) then they are mopped up by the Cat 2 -> Cat 4 academies. Blackburn/Bolton/Stockport/Preston/Burnley/Bradford/Oldham/Rochdale etc. The same applies in the Midlands, London etc.
They still get access to the academy environment. If they kick on then the bigger academies come and get them. That safety net isn't there on Teesside as those smaller Cat2-4 academies don't exist. There's loads of lads playing grassroots in the North East that would be in academies if they lived elsewhere in the country and they would be getting that better coaching and more professional training environment.

c) Other areas of the country have a higher population of people who's ancestry descend from West Africa or other parts of the world where stronger athleticism can be more common from genetics.
 
Ash88 said:
Academy players get poached now a lot more than they used to.
We lost Anton and Bailey Palmer to Brighton at 16 years old - Ajay Matthews went to Millwall, AJ Bridge went to Norwich (then got released), Eric Hamelberg's just went to Stoke.

It's happening too much in the championship now in my opinion.
Preston had a young LB called Kian Best who was just breaking through into the first team, played 13 times in the championship.... He got poached and went to Chelsea U21s on a free.

The problem for the academy as a whole is even when we produce one good player (Law McCabe is a good example), they're still training with 15 players who are not good enough, and the difference in ability is not even close... Most of our academy get released and end up in non-league.

If a League 1 standard player (McCabe) is training/playing with non-league players every week... He doesn't improve, and ends up going backwards.
Click to expand...
You are one of those I was referring to as being much more in touch with the academy than me.

So what do we do?
Do we continue with a top Cat academy and no player supply line or revenue stream?
It’s expensive.
Under P&S, the Academy was an allowance.
Not sure that it makes a difference in SCR?

Genuinely asking.
 
B_G said:
I think there's a few issues:

1)
The gap between academy football and first team football is getting bigger. It's not a problem exclusive to Boro.
More and more foreign players just continues to drive the standard up of professional football.
A lot of lads come out and play Northern League football who would have been good enough to have a professional career 20 year ago.

2)
While we are a Championship club, we are wide open for our top players to go elsewhere. Obviously we've all heard of the Bailey twins going to Brighton recently in a reasonably high profile move, but even younger than that, we see the top talent in the north east choose Sunderland, Newcastle and Leeds before Boro's academy.

3)
I think this is the biggest one.
The north-east is no longer a hot bed of football. There's a much higher strike rate of young footballers going on to become pros from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool etc. Multiple reasons to this.

a) the environment they learn to play. Cage football and similar inner city games are being linked heavily with good early development.

b) access to pro academies. A kid brought up in the North East has access to 4 different Cat 1 academies. If Boro / Newcastle / Leeds / Sunderland don't fancy them they stay in grassroots with a volunteer coach. Leeds tend to recruit heavily around Leeds/Sheffield/Manchester so very few go into leeds from Boro. So you can narrow it down to 3 academies. Approx 40 kids in the whole north east at U9 and maybe 60-70 kids at U15.

A kid brought up in the North West for example will have access to so many academies. If the big ones don't fancy them (Utd/City/Liverpool/Everton/Leeds etc) then they are mopped up by the Cat 2 -> Cat 4 academies. Blackburn/Bolton/Stockport/Preston/Burnley/Bradford/Oldham/Rochdale etc. The same applies in the Midlands, London etc.
They still get access to the academy environment. If they kick on then the bigger academies come and get them. That safety net isn't there on Teesside as those smaller Cat2-4 academies don't exist. There's loads of lads playing grassroots in the North East that would be in academies if they lived elsewhere in the country and they would be getting that better coaching and more professional training environment.

c) Other areas of the country have a higher population of people who's ancestry descend from West Africa or other parts of the world where stronger athleticism can be more common from genetics.
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One more I will add - the premier league teams and their loan farms.

They have huge squads they have no intention of playing, just to loan out and sell if possible.

Championship teams are giving chances to prem loans before their own players.
 
South London seems to a hot bed of new players nowadays - I agree with BG points on this.

So our central midfield is currently Morris and Kante, we obviously need another player adding to replace Hackney to some degree..
 
indeedido said:
You are one of those I was referring to as being much more in touch with the academy than me.

So what do we do?
Do we continue with a top Cat academy and no player supply line or revenue stream?
It’s expensive.
Under P&S, the Academy was an allowance.
Not sure that it makes a difference in SCR?

Genuinely asking.
Click to expand...
We as fans see the Palmer twins going to Brighton as a failure of the academy/team/club/infrastrucutre.

The club will see it as a win for the academy. Not quite the Hackney/Downing shaped win, but a financial win all the same. The system itself is broken.


There is a popular video doing the rounds ion instagram of a wolves academy head talking about the knock on effects of brexit, meaning the top academies gamble on younger talent even more due to the limited numbers they can bring in from abroad.

He mentions how they have a 16 year old who they will have to invest a few million quid in or he will move elsewhere. When 16 year olds are making those demands before they've signed a pro deal or kicked a ball the system needs changing!
 
The lesser northern academies take on youngsters from our area, it doesn't just stop at Leeds, I know of one lad from Park End playing at Huddersfields academy just off the top of my head, there's more mobility than you think especially for kids no longer in school.
 
indeedido said:
You are one of those I was referring to as being much more in touch with the academy than me.

So what do we do?
Do we continue with a top Cat academy and no player supply line or revenue stream?
It’s expensive.
Under P&S, the Academy was an allowance.
Not sure that it makes a difference in SCR?

Genuinely asking.
Click to expand...

Personally I'd leave the academy league and setup a B team like Watford have just done, but that's not going to happen so...

The overall goal would be to increase the floor of the academy as a whole. There's 2 ways of doing this...

Get rid of the deadwood
If a player is still not even national league level at 21-22 years old, then he's not good enough. Simple as that.
It's harsh, but pay up their contracts and replace them with better players - because it's slowing down the progress of the younger players who are next in line for the position in the U21s.

Players like Jack Stott - spent a year at Gateshead at 20 years old and wasn't good enough - we released him - now he's at Queen of the South in the Scottish 3rd tier. Too many levels below standard.
We should be releasing these players at 19-20, not 20-21 or even 22-23 for some of them.
If he was released earlier, 17 year old's like Fin Cartwright could have been moved up into his position from the U18s and given more of an opportunity to progress.

Poaching from lower leagues
Chelsea and Brighton do it to us, why don't we do it to other teams more often?

I mentioned a 17 year old called George Nevett on the forums in 2024 (if you search George Nevett you'll see my posts) - He was, at the time, transitioning from Rochdale U18 to Rochdale first team...
We could have bought him for 150k - He later signed for Peterborough for 400k and has had a two half seasons in L1 - Probably worth 600k now.
Crewe have a surprisingly good academy system. Who's their best player? - Why aren't we poaching him?

There's a striker at Sheff Wed - 17 year old William Grainger - he scored a goal in the championship (yes, the same league we're in), last season. He's valued at 200k.

We should spend £1 million buying 5 or 6 of these type of players and pad out the U21 squad with players who are a standard above who we have currently.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
We picked up Djed Spence from the bargain bin. We sold him for upwards of ten million. With more to follow.
We picked up Morgan Rogers for a million. We sold him for 8 million. With much more to follow.

We bought britt assombalonga for 15 million. He left for nowt.
We bought Savile for 7 million. He left for nowt.

Not every player we pick up for a million or so is going to end up with a value of £100 million plus. If it was as that easy everyone would do it. For every Morgan Rogers or Late Lath there will be a three or four that don't make the grade.

Our better academy players get picked up by bigger teams. You get **** all compensation and a weedy sell on fee.

Given the ***** we ended up in, skint, heading for relegation, with Warnock having to bail us out, it's easy to see why we are taking this path. It's certainly not perfect what we are doing. But it's a damn sight better than what we were doing.
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I cant see anything in what you said which contradicts my point. Assombalonga and Saville bear no relevance whatsoever. I`m talking of the likes of Kante, Sene, Hamilton, Hansen, Nypan, Engel, Gitau, Illing-Junior, Iheanacho + a raft of players we have brought in to the U21 system and never heard of again. Waste of a shirt and a waste of money.
 
r00fie1 said:
I cant see anything in what you said which contradicts my point. Assombalonga and Saville bear no relevance whatsoever. I`m talking of the likes of Kante, Sene, Hamilton, Hansen, Nypan, Engel, Gitau, Illing-Junior, Iheanacho + a raft of players we have brought in to the U21 system and never heard of again. Waste of a shirt and a waste of money.
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I refer you to the third paragraph.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
I refer you to the third paragraph.
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I read nothing there which contradicts my point. Hows about the list of players above, whose wages we have been paying and getting us nowhere. Apparently, the club spends over 100% of its income in wages. Lets take that into account? According to https://www.capology.com/club/middlesbrough/salaries/ we spent over £40M on wages last year. How long can we sustain that. If the idea is to act as a production line - buy low, sell high, its an extremely risky strategy. You cant run a business on "chance".
 
Ash88 said:
Personally I'd leave the academy league and setup a B team like Watford have just done, but that's not going to happen so...

The overall goal would be to increase the floor of the academy as a whole. There's 2 ways of doing this...

Get rid of the deadwood
If a player is still not even national league level at 21-22 years old, then he's not good enough. Simple as that.
It's harsh, but pay up their contracts and replace them with better players - because it's slowing down the progress of the younger players who are next in line for the position in the U21s.

Players like Jack Stott - spent a year at Gateshead at 20 years old and wasn't good enough - we released him - now he's at Queen of the South in the Scottish 3rd tier. Too many levels below standard.
We should be releasing these players at 19-20, not 20-21 or even 22-23 for some of them.
If he was released earlier, 17 year old's like Fin Cartwright could have been moved up into his position from the U18s and given more of an opportunity to progress.

Poaching from lower leagues
Chelsea and Brighton do it to us, why don't we do it to other teams more often?

I mentioned a 17 year old called George Nevett on the forums in 2024 (if you search George Nevett you'll see my posts) - He was, at the time, transitioning from Rochdale U18 to Rochdale first team...
We could have bought him for 150k - He later signed for Peterborough for 400k and has had a two half seasons in L1 - Probably worth 600k now.
Crewe have a surprisingly good academy system. Who's their best player? - Why aren't we poaching him?

There's a striker at Sheff Wed - 17 year old William Grainger - he scored a goal in the championship (yes, the same league we're in), last season. He's valued at 200k.

We should spend £1 million buying 5 or 6 of these type of players and pad out the U21 squad with players who are a standard above who we have currently.
Click to expand...
We do this to a degree, we've just signed three lads, one being Carlton Coles son, i forget the other two.
Then there is Isiah Jones, Djed Spence, Archie Baptiste, Terrell Agyemang, Harley Hunt, josh Dede, They were all signed as young pros in the 17-20 age bracket from other clubs to pad out the youth teams and hopefully transition into first team football
 
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