At half-time of the last game of the season at The Valley, the Academy was paraded round the pitch for our applause: the under-eights, the seven-to-twelves, the under-fifteens: there were literally hundreds of them. Yet not even half-a-dozen will eventually be good enough to play in the first team of any Championship club.
What on earth is the point? For example, I don't agree with all the swooning admiration many Lifers have for Jordan Cousins. He is an ordinary midfielder who, along with his team-mates, was cursorily by-passed by plenty of other "ordinary" teams last season. They beat us regularly, and we were almost relegated.
It's not the Academy we need. To compete properly and to get in to the play-offs any time soon, we must buy experienced players: intelligent and tough guys who can seize possession in midfield, move forward, and pass accurately to incisive strikers who will score.
All the rest is a soft Valley full of mutual admiration, self-congratulation and simple delusion.
What on earth is the point? For example, I don't agree with all the swooning admiration many Lifers have for Jordan Cousins. He is an ordinary midfielder who, along with his team-mates, was cursorily by-passed by plenty of other "ordinary" teams last season. They beat us regularly, and we were almost relegated.
I've got a really good power drill. However, I tried using it to paint my walls yesterday and it was rubbish.
Use the tools correctly and they'll get the job done. Cousins being picked for the U21's shows that he's more than ordinary. The academy is huge for our club. Winning the U18's league last year and constantly going toe-to-toe with all the big boys. Without looking too deeply into it and not an avid observer of the U18's, I'd say we're in the top 10 academy teams in the land.
Also, let's make a hopeful assumption that Poyet signs a new deal. If we were to then sell him on in a years time, he would probably fetch a fairly decent price, So the academy contributes towards the financial side of things too.
You seem to also be judging them on the percentage of players who make the final cut. Thank god schools don't work on your logic. "We have 300 children here, but only a small handful will go on to earn a degree, so fuck it, let's shut the school down". There are many players who come through our academy (and others) who, although don't make the grade, drop down to lower or non-league. As we're not top of the food chain ourselves, clubs like ours end up benefitting from cast-offs form the likes of Utd, arsenal etc.
When you're watching the WC this summer and moaning about how shit England our, think how worse it would be if clubs started dropping academies.......................
At half-time of the last game of the season at The Valley, the Academy was paraded round the pitch for our applause: the under-eights, the seven-to-twelves, the under-fifteens: there were literally hundreds of them. Yet not even half-a-dozen will eventually be good enough to play in the first team of any Championship club.
What on earth is the point? For example, I don't agree with all the swooning admiration many Lifers have for Jordan Cousins. He is an ordinary midfielder who, along with his team-mates, was cursorily by-passed by plenty of other "ordinary" teams last season. They beat us regularly, and we were almost relegated.
It's not the Academy we need. To compete properly and to get in to the play-offs any time soon, we must buy experienced players: intelligent and tough guys who can seize possession in midfield, move forward, and pass accurately to incisive strikers who will score.
All the rest is a soft Valley full of mutual admiration, self-congratulation and simple delusion.
My god. Where to start.
Perhaps a decent place would be highlighting just how many of our academy products took the field in our last Championship match v Blackpool just three weeks ago.
Fox Poyet Cousins Pigott Harriot
I will also mention Wilson who although we bought came through the academy and I will also mention Solly who would have played if fit and Lennon who made the bench but did not get on.
Do you really think that for a club like Charlton that bringing our own players through is not a good idea ? Tell me it ain't so.
You are right - there is an incredible drop-out rate, but you just can't tell at 8 years old who will continue to develop and who won't. And that continues right up to the late teen years - it's very risky to pay a lot for a teenager even.
The point is that, like a lot of clubs, we can't afford to buy in all our talent so we have to develop it ourselves through the academy. Also, the reality is that if we do nurture someone really good, we're going to sell them on for good money. We are a selling club,as are practically all clubs except the very top Premiership clubs... and even they sometimes have to let their star players go when a big european side comes knocking.
We need the academy and, have a heart, it's good to give those boys and their proud mums and dads a day out.
The kids will always make their parents proud - playing football on the municipal park, fringed by wilting begonia. The Valley should not be some sort of community help-centre for the disadvantaged - or for players to be nurtured and sold elsewhere.
The Valley is a place of fifteen-thousand punters - you and I - who demand the crossbar be rattled and the net be rifled by heroic men. Other teams do it to us: even Yeovil the other week slid some glorious passes in to our box that were way beyond the inspiration of Sparrows Lane. Routinely in the second half we are attacking the Covered End and have nothing by design, no moves to turn the opposing defenders inside-out: nothing deceitful, nothing clever or rehearsed. Something, possibly, might happen.
We have been comprehensively beaten at home by too many "ordinary" teams over the last couple of seasons. Saga Lout - those players who beat us have plenty of self-doubts, financial insecurity, and pride for their club. Charlton are not exceptional. What we need are good players.
Viewfinder is normally a very rational poster and i assume he is still "sleeping it off" after exhausting himself ...only on CL Would you find such prosaic allusions to "wilting begonia" ...i think that deserves its own thread ..i think you must have ground up some of the wilting begonia and put it in your cocoa ...
You are right - there is an incredible drop-out rate, but you just can't tell at 8 years old who will continue to develop and who won't. And that continues right up to the late teen years - it's very risky to pay a lot for a teenager even.
The point is that, like a lot of clubs, we can't afford to buy in all our talent so we have to develop it ourselves through the academy. Also, the reality is that if we do nurture someone really good, we're going to sell them on for good money. We are a selling club,as are practically all clubs except the very top Premiership clubs... and even they sometimes have to let their star players go when a big european side comes knocking.
We need the academy and, have a heart, it's good to give those boys and their proud mums and dads a day out.
The kids will always make their parents proud - playing football on the municipal park, fringed by wilting begonia. The Valley should not be some sort of community help-centre for the disadvantaged - or for players to be nurtured and sold elsewhere.
The Valley is a place of fifteen-thousand punters - you and I - who demand the crossbar be rattled and the net be rifled by heroic men. Other teams do it to us: even Yeovil the other week slid some glorious passes in to our box that were way beyond the inspiration of Sparrows Lane. Routinely in the second half we are attacking the Covered End and have nothing by design, no moves to turn the opposing defenders inside-out: nothing deceitful, nothing clever or rehearsed. Something, possibly, might happen.
We have been comprehensively beaten at home by too many "ordinary" teams over the last couple of seasons. Saga Lout - those players who beat us have plenty of self-doubts, financial insecurity, and pride for their club. Charlton are not exceptional. What we need are good players.
Ha ha. You are Stuart Hall and I claim my prize. (That's the football Stuart Hall, nothing to do with the "prison" matters).
I will join the RD love in when I see some evidence to do so. I really will - I have gone into the summer with serious doubts about him - based on his dealings since taking over the club but I am willing to change my mind. Maybe he saved the club from extinction, so if we end up in League 2 we should just be happy about that, but I am looking for some signs that we can move forwards on the pitch, making going to watch my team a little more pleasurable than it has been for the last 7 or 8 years!
I am viewing it all as an imaginary set of scales. On one side there is the positives and on the other the negatives. So on the negative side we have selling Kermogant when we were in danger of relegation (1kg), selling Stephens (500g), Thuram and others (500g), Missing out on any decent loans (500g), sacking and not backing Powell (1kg), using Kermogant and Stephens money on a player that can't get in our reserves (500g), and the first of the close season news is Dervitte going (500g). So that's 4.5 kg on the negative side. On the positive side I'll be generous. Bringing in Riga (1.5kg), AA (500g), Wiggins and JJ signing contracts (1kg) - so I make us 1.5 kg to make up on the scales before I start to consider being positive about him. That would probably be more than covered if Riga, Poyet, hamer and Morro get signed up. If we make some decent signings in addition, that will also be positive weights. But if they don't and the signings are like the last window (all bullshit - we tried to buy him and tried to loan him etc...) Then that negative side will become pretty overwhelming.
My apparent negativity clearly tires some people - but I am merely somebody who is looking for the evidence to be positive and calling what I see and when I see it, I will be positive! I want and hope to be. It worries me that I haven't seen too much reason yet. We stayed up but I think we were lucky - if we lost at Sheff Wed, which we nearly did, it could easily have been different. As Airman said earlier in the season, this would have been the most needless relegation in our history. I really concur with that view and I see RD as the man who nearly made it happen. I hope he acts to change my view.
I suppose we will start to bring in players once we have that pre-season thingy in Belgium................and release a few more once someone else has had a look at what we have available!
Viewfinder is correct that if a handful of those paraded along the pitch make it, we will, and they will have done well. But less correct in his critism of the academy. A good case can be made that the strength of the academy kept us up with a number of locally produced players playing major roles! I think we should be praising the academy's recent results.
My hope is the kids that have done so well to get as far as they have work as hard as they can at their game and never believe they have made it until they have. Where the dream becomes all ecompassing, it makes it even crueller when kids are discarded. But we know most will not make it so they need to work just as hard at their school work and alternative futures. Parents have an important role in this.
What on earth is the point? For example, I don't agree with all the swooning admiration many Lifers have for Jordan Cousins. He is an ordinary midfielder who, along with his team-mates, was cursorily by-passed by plenty of other "ordinary" teams last season. They beat us regularly, and we were almost relegated.
I've got a really good power drill. However, I tried using it to paint my walls yesterday and it was rubbish.
Use the tools correctly and they'll get the job done. Cousins being picked for the U21's shows that he's more than ordinary. The academy is huge for our club. Winning the U18's league last year and constantly going toe-to-toe with all the big boys. Without looking too deeply into it and not an avid observer of the U18's, I'd say we're in the top 10 academy teams in the land.
Also, let's make a hopeful assumption that Poyet signs a new deal. If we were to then sell him on in a years time, he would probably fetch a fairly decent price, So the academy contributes towards the financial side of things too.
You seem to also be judging them on the percentage of players who make the final cut. Thank god schools don't work on your logic. "We have 300 children here, but only a small handful will go on to earn a degree, so fuck it, let's shut the school down". There are many players who come through our academy (and others) who, although don't make the grade, drop down to lower or non-league. As we're not top of the food chain ourselves, clubs like ours end up benefitting from cast-offs form the likes of Utd, arsenal etc.
When you're watching the WC this summer and moaning about how shit England our, think how worse it would be if clubs started dropping academies.......................
6 Dervite spent four months on loan at Southend United in 2009 – playing alongside Dougie Freedman, who was in the last few months of his own playing career.
At half-time of the last game of the season at The Valley, the Academy was paraded round the pitch for our applause: the under-eights, the seven-to-twelves, the under-fifteens: there were literally hundreds of them. Yet not even half-a-dozen will eventually be good enough to play in the first team of any Championship club.
What on earth is the point? For example, I don't agree with all the swooning admiration many Lifers have for Jordan Cousins. He is an ordinary midfielder who, along with his team-mates, was cursorily by-passed by plenty of other "ordinary" teams last season. They beat us regularly, and we were almost relegated.
It's not the Academy we need. To compete properly and to get in to the play-offs any time soon, we must buy experienced players: intelligent and tough guys who can seize possession in midfield, move forward, and pass accurately to incisive strikers who will score.
All the rest is a soft Valley full of mutual admiration, self-congratulation and simple delusion.
Viewfinder that is the biggest crock of shit I have read on here for a very long time. Producing good quality players from our academy is the way forward. We produced Parker, he did well for us and sold him for 10 M. There are a number of other players like Bowyer, Jenkinson, Shelvey. We have produced Poyet and Cousins two of our best players last Season. You comment on Cousins being not very good but he has just been picked for the England U21s, do you know more than Gareth Southgate. We have also got a great crop of youngsters coming through like Ahearne-Grant, Gomes, Edwards etc. If we can secure them on contracts they will do well for us. It was wonderful to see so many home grown players turn out for us at the end of the Season, Solly, Fox, Cousins, Poyet, Harriott.
Yes we need some good quality hardened professionals to supplement the youngsters. But closing down the Academy is not the way to go.
There we are - you said it in your second sentence: the academy is simply a way of making a profit. I have watched Jordan Cousins from the Covered End at every home game, and on the box at Sheffield United where he simply could not control an ordinary ten-yard pass. Ah, now I get it - Jordan Cousins is such a great player that if he is moved fifteen yards sideways from his "natural position", he loses all his ability. You may be right. Great players have natural talent and fundamental skills: they are hard-earned.
All those teams who beat us at The Valley last season and the one before: they too have academies, youngsters, youth teams - and they have more ability than us: that's why they win. You deny them their victories. Jordan Cousins is a young, very ordinary player simply doing his job in a desperately poor team that avoided Crawley and Colchester by a whisker. He is culpable for our regular defeats.
My plumber has just efficiently fixed a dripping tap. He wears a red shirt, and according to you, he is a hero - almost a legend.
Lets also not forget our academy acts as a very good advertisement and promotional tool to youngsters of all ages in the area and their families. In a very competitive market where the big glamour clubs get `free' promotion through the media we have to create our own. Our academy gets our name `out there' and therefor attracting potential future paying customers.
I always enjoy your eloquent posts, though in all honesty I'm never entirely sure whether you're being entirely serious!!
In that spirit, I thought I'd post a reply in tongue-in-cheek mode.
One Sunday evening in March this year I found myself at Estadio Santiago Bernabeau for the La Liga game between Real and Barcelona. For the record, the away team won a fantastic contest 4-3. Just 48 hours later I was at Rochdale for the Sky Bet League Two match against Portsmouth.
I was quite impressed by Rochdale. They played attractive passing football, as do all of Keith Hill's sides, but they lacked the searing pace of the magnificent, almost unplayable Angel Di Maria. That was disappointing. In central midfield, the young Joe Allen was combative and linked play well, but where Xavi and Iniesta spun, turned or simply drifted away from their markers at will, Allen, unless already in space when the ball arrived, found himself three feet in the air or ten yards back from where he started. Its not clear quite what Hill is doing on the training ground. I liked the look of Olly Lancashire at CB for Dale, but he lacks the panache of Gerard Piquet and Sergio Ramos. The ageing, lumbering Patrick Agyemang, alone upfront for Pompey, didn't carry quiet the same threat as Karim Benzema. It was clear that Carlo Ancelotti was getting more out of his players than Richie Barker. No wonder Barker then got sacked!! And don't talk to me about the full backs. Once you've seen the seemingly tireless Danny Alves marauding relentlessly up and down his line the game is never quite the same again.
So what's my point? By the time I'd arrived at Spotland I'd recalibrated. I wasn't expecting to see Messi, Ronaldo, Mascherano or Xabi Alonso. I really enjoyed the evening. Rochdale's fans were very happy, their side won 3-0 and eventually clinched only their third ever promotion.
We're better than Rochdale, but at the Valley we'll never see the quality I saw earlier this year in Madrid. Last season we were a bottom eight Championship side, but we did enough to survive. Truth be told that was our level the year before too, not withstanding our eventually misleading points total, and the odds are it will be a similar story next season. It's all about wage bill.
We are where we are, wilting begonias or not!! I'll bet you've renewed your season ticket and I'd bet you enjoy it really though!! If not, take out a subscription to Sky Sports!! The quality of football these days is unreal. But that's the point. It's not real. What we have is honest, hard working professionals, wearing the shirt with pride. Michael Morrison is not a Rio Ferdinand, or even a Nemanja Vidic, but he is a hero in his own right and gives everything he's got. A man you'd want next to you in a trench, as they say. Let's enjoy it for what it is and think positive!!
:-)
PS @Wheresmeticket? I've spoken to my therapist and the trip to Rochdale is OK, apparently, at least compared with the "cautiously optimistic about Charlton next season" problem I'm wrestling with!!
The only issue with the Academy for the last seven years has been that the ownership of the club has not been financially strong enough to hold onto the likes of Shelvey and Jenkinson for longer until they were worth £3-5m instead of the £1M + bonus items received. All that changed in January when someone worth €500m took over. Every couple of years the academy wins their u18 section and we can see the calibre of players coming through. Give them another couple of years and we will see them improve still further. Individual players will come and go but the Charlton squad will get younger and the players better. I agree with Mundell that we are bottom eight right now but I can see us moving into the middle eight IF Duchatelet makes that choice this summer.
That was the best response possible to VF's drivel. Bravo.
Harsh to refer to Viewfinder's posts as drivel although Mundell Fleming is bang on the money.
What is wrong with a little romance in football though? The old gits amongst us will recall Michael Parkinson making a decent living, pre chat show days, through his Sunday Times articles recalling "Skinner" Normanton and other Barnsley heroes from his childhood and adolescence. In reality third division North or second division at best.
Viewfinder remembers the Bearded Pirate Hales who on one occasion thumped an opposition player and walked straight off the field without bothering to trouble the referee for the formal command. And that was when he wasn't fighting his own team! :-)
Distance lends enchantment and for every Southampton and Brighton of the seventies there was a lot of old dross to go with it which we do not choose to recall just as there has been plenty of dross to go with the splendid Cardiff performance of last season. It's second division football. Plus ca change.
My issue with the comments by Viewfinder is that it is unnecessarily biased towards mistakes that these young players make, while simultaneously remembering every good little thing that Yeovil (and any other team you choose to mention) did well.
No mention of when barrel-chested Cousins knocks over a wizened old general in midfield twice his age and comes away with the ball. No mention of when Harriott leaves his opposite full back with twisted blood, or when he smashes a crisp shot first time in the bottom corner past the despairing dive of the goalkeeper.
We can all point out the mistakes that players make if you look hard enough. I'd rather have Cousins or Harriott out there making mistakes and growing as a player in front of our eyes than see Michael Stewart or Lee Cook, whether they've ever taken a good throw in or made an incisive pass in their career or not.
I remember Viewfinder being very very vocal about Doncaster's quick throw in against us that led to a goal. Despite their apparent quality, they ended up getting relegated.
Comments
Use the tools correctly and they'll get the job done. Cousins being picked for the U21's shows that he's more than ordinary. The academy is huge for our club. Winning the U18's league last year and constantly going toe-to-toe with all the big boys. Without looking too deeply into it and not an avid observer of the U18's, I'd say we're in the top 10 academy teams in the land.
Also, let's make a hopeful assumption that Poyet signs a new deal. If we were to then sell him on in a years time, he would probably fetch a fairly decent price, So the academy contributes towards the financial side of things too.
You seem to also be judging them on the percentage of players who make the final cut. Thank god schools don't work on your logic. "We have 300 children here, but only a small handful will go on to earn a degree, so fuck it, let's shut the school down". There are many players who come through our academy (and others) who, although don't make the grade, drop down to lower or non-league. As we're not top of the food chain ourselves, clubs like ours end up benefitting from cast-offs form the likes of Utd, arsenal etc.
When you're watching the WC this summer and moaning about how shit England our, think how worse it would be if clubs started dropping academies.......................
Perhaps a decent place would be highlighting just how many of our academy products took the field in our last Championship match v Blackpool just three weeks ago.
Fox
Poyet
Cousins
Pigott
Harriot
I will also mention Wilson who although we bought came through the academy and I will also mention Solly who would have played if fit and Lennon who made the bench but did not get on.
Do you really think that for a club like Charlton that bringing our own players through is not a good idea ? Tell me it ain't so.
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/wanderers/americantour/11213299.10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_Dorian_Dervite/?ref=var_0
My hope is the kids that have done so well to get as far as they have work as hard as they can at their game and never believe they have made it until they have. Where the dream becomes all ecompassing, it makes it even crueller when kids are discarded. But we know most will not make it so they need to work just as hard at their school work and alternative futures. Parents have an important role in this.
:-)
All those teams who beat us at The Valley last season and the one before: they too have academies, youngsters, youth teams - and they have more ability than us: that's why they win. You deny them their victories. Jordan Cousins is a young, very ordinary player simply doing his job in a desperately poor team that avoided Crawley and Colchester by a whisker. He is culpable for our regular defeats.
My plumber has just efficiently fixed a dripping tap. He wears a red shirt, and according to you, he is a hero - almost a legend.
Shows how stupid it was to let all these players contracts run down (Not RD's fault).
Bolton can offer bigger wages, even though they are losing £'s a year.
I always enjoy your eloquent posts, though in all honesty I'm never entirely sure whether you're being entirely serious!!
In that spirit, I thought I'd post a reply in tongue-in-cheek mode.
One Sunday evening in March this year I found myself at Estadio Santiago Bernabeau for the La Liga game between Real and Barcelona. For the record, the away team won a fantastic contest 4-3. Just 48 hours later I was at Rochdale for the Sky Bet League Two match against Portsmouth.
I was quite impressed by Rochdale. They played attractive passing football, as do all of Keith Hill's sides, but they lacked the searing pace of the magnificent, almost unplayable Angel Di Maria. That was disappointing. In central midfield, the young Joe Allen was combative and linked play well, but where Xavi and Iniesta spun, turned or simply drifted away from their markers at will, Allen, unless already in space when the ball arrived, found himself three feet in the air or ten yards back from where he started. Its not clear quite what Hill is doing on the training ground. I liked the look of Olly Lancashire at CB for Dale, but he lacks the panache of Gerard Piquet and Sergio Ramos. The ageing, lumbering Patrick Agyemang, alone upfront for Pompey, didn't carry quiet the same threat as Karim Benzema. It was clear that Carlo Ancelotti was getting more out of his players than Richie Barker. No wonder Barker then got sacked!! And don't talk to me about the full backs. Once you've seen the seemingly tireless Danny Alves marauding relentlessly up and down his line the game is never quite the same again.
So what's my point? By the time I'd arrived at Spotland I'd recalibrated. I wasn't expecting to see Messi, Ronaldo, Mascherano or Xabi Alonso. I really enjoyed the evening. Rochdale's fans were very happy, their side won 3-0 and eventually clinched only their third ever promotion.
We're better than Rochdale, but at the Valley we'll never see the quality I saw earlier this year in Madrid. Last season we were a bottom eight Championship side, but we did enough to survive. Truth be told that was our level the year before too, not withstanding our eventually misleading points total, and the odds are it will be a similar story next season. It's all about wage bill.
We are where we are, wilting begonias or not!! I'll bet you've renewed your season ticket and I'd bet you enjoy it really though!! If not, take out a subscription to Sky Sports!! The quality of football these days is unreal. But that's the point. It's not real. What we have is honest, hard working professionals, wearing the shirt with pride. Michael Morrison is not a Rio Ferdinand, or even a Nemanja Vidic, but he is a hero in his own right and gives everything he's got. A man you'd want next to you in a trench, as they say. Let's enjoy it for what it is and think positive!!
:-)
PS @Wheresmeticket? I've spoken to my therapist and the trip to Rochdale is OK, apparently, at least compared with the "cautiously optimistic about Charlton next season" problem I'm wrestling with!!
That was the best response possible to VF's drivel. Bravo.
All that changed in January when someone worth €500m took over.
Every couple of years the academy wins their u18 section and we can see the calibre of players coming through. Give them another couple of years and we will see them improve still further.
Individual players will come and go but the Charlton squad will get younger and the players better.
I agree with Mundell that we are bottom eight right now but I can see us moving into the middle eight IF Duchatelet makes that choice this summer.
What is wrong with a little romance in football though? The old gits amongst us will recall Michael Parkinson making a decent living, pre chat show days, through his Sunday Times articles recalling "Skinner" Normanton and other Barnsley heroes from his childhood and adolescence. In reality third division North or second division at best.
Viewfinder remembers the Bearded Pirate Hales who on one occasion thumped an opposition player and walked straight off the field without bothering to trouble the referee for the formal command. And that was when he wasn't fighting his own team! :-)
Distance lends enchantment and for every Southampton and Brighton of the seventies there was a lot of old dross to go with it which we do not choose to recall just as there has been plenty of dross to go with the splendid Cardiff performance of last season. It's second division football. Plus ca change.
As Mundell says enjoy it for what it is.
No mention of when barrel-chested Cousins knocks over a wizened old general in midfield twice his age and comes away with the ball. No mention of when Harriott leaves his opposite full back with twisted blood, or when he smashes a crisp shot first time in the bottom corner past the despairing dive of the goalkeeper.
We can all point out the mistakes that players make if you look hard enough. I'd rather have Cousins or Harriott out there making mistakes and growing as a player in front of our eyes than see Michael Stewart or Lee Cook, whether they've ever taken a good throw in or made an incisive pass in their career or not.
I remember Viewfinder being very very vocal about Doncaster's quick throw in against us that led to a goal. Despite their apparent quality, they ended up getting relegated.