Club youth thread

[DH84]

Stolen from the Championship forum. Talk about your youth players here.

Category 2 League One clubs are: Crewe, Coventry, Barnsley, Colchester, Millwall and Sheffield United.

All the others play in the Youth Alliance League as far as I know.

 

[Saddlerrad]

Our most and obvious promising youth player at the moment is Rico Henry.

The best youth player and general talent I've seen in over 10 years of watching Walsall. Only came on the first team scene properly this season, moved from the U18's to the first team within a few weeks. Trained for 1 week with England U19's on recommendation of Dean Smith and they picked him immediately into their squad for the next game - where he made his first appearance. Great strength, tenacious, nice left foot, gets forward and does okay going back. Skillful, quick - just very good. Half of the Premier League have had him scouted. Providing he has no big injuries in the next few years, I would be surprised not to see him become a Premier League regular and potentially make an England squad.

He is a couple of years younger and better in his own position than Scott Dann was when he left...so that goes to show my thoughts on him.

Reece Flanagan apparently is very dominant in reserve and youth games but has so far, shown nothing in first team games to suggest he's anything other than a weak link at this stage.

Liam Kinsella, has played right wing back 3 or 4 times this season for us, even though he plays in central midfield for the youth or reserve team. Looks like a solid squad player currently, decent on the ball, quite tenacious also. Could make a decent league 1 full back one day.

 

[Coalite]

We're generally crap at producing our own players, and have been for as long as i can remember.

The best of the current lot may be young Laurence Maguire, younger brother of Hull's Harry and also a centre half.

The best of the last twenty years have been Tendayi Darikwa, Jordan Bowery (says it all really) and Jamie Lowry who i think was destined to be a cracking player until he had a serious, virtually career ending knee injury. Even our claims to Tendayi and Bowery may be tenuous as we only picked them up into our YT when Notts County's folded.

Slim pickings indeed, but apparently our academy has been expanded loads in the last five years or so, so hopefully some seeds have been sown.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

We are just starting to see rewards for our youth set up with Harry Middleton and Mitchell Lund both regulars for the first team, Liam Mandeville, Billy Whitehouse and Matt Davies regularly on the bench with the first 2 making sub appearances. We have also just sold the McKay twins to Leeds (who will undoubtedly claim them as products of their own if they make it). I can't say there are future Prem players let alone International or multi million pound ones amongst them but it's far better than it has been for over 30 years.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Ben Garratt's the best keeper in the League, Ryan Colclough could be quite decent at some point and we still dream of a team of Ollie Turton's.

Other than that, nothing to shout about.

 

[UTS]

Won our youth league last year, with the help of Carrington.

Sold youth product Matt Foulds to Everton for 255k last week. Anthony Dudley (currently ripping up the conference) and Scott Burgess are two youth players hovering around the first XI.

Our new star player is George Miller who seems to score shed loads of goals for the youth.

 

[SaddlerJonny]

Liam Kinsella, has played right wing back 3 or 4 times this season for us, even though he plays in central midfield for the youth or reserve team. Looks like a solid squad player currently, decent on the ball, quite tenacious also. Could make a decent league 1 full back one day.

Think Kinsella is a decent league 1 full back at the moment actually, not exactly the most adventurous going forwards, which I suspect may be due to confidence/inexperience and will come with time. But defensively he is solid, he did very well yesterday against one of the league's better wingers in Murphy whilst also not having a right winger to cover him too.

Kieron Morris for me is a brighter prospect than Flanagan who just doesn't turn up in first team games. Rocket of a left foot, very strong on the ball and hard to tackle and also had a half decent engine too. Reminds me of Paterson before he got really good, too many blind alleys and does go missing in games. Matt Preston is also a very solid and reliable centre half to have on the bench, don't think I have seen him have a bad game, and the one where he made a mistake (Chesterfield at home) he scored in. He can be a very good league 1 centre half if he keeps putting in good performances. He is hard yet precise in the tackle, a great header of the ball and isn't terrible on the ball like you would expect from a Butler esc centre half. Hopefully Bakayoko can do a Kieron Morris and revitalise his career in the last 6 months of his contract.

From our current youth team I have heard good things about Mazi Kouyhar, Jordan Sangha and Dan Jezeph (who has been on the bench a few times this season.)

 

[JJ1532]

Our U18s are doing really well at the moment. 10 wins, 4 draws and 4 defeats so far which is excellent. They have been led by 3 really promising players in Charlie Kirk, Oli Finney and Callum Ainley. All 3 have the potential to be cracking players for us, too bad the first team is in such a state that they'll never get to flourish.

 

[valefan16]

Erm... None currently although high hopes on Kapend and Smith who is on loan at Torquay but we've tended to have a policy under Smurf of bringing in players such as Andoh, Hugill, Campion who are fairly young and raw and that's worked with Andoh and Hugill.

The only decent product that's come through recently in Sam Morsy (although hasn't Raglan done ok?) should make some money at least with the sell on clause but Micky didn't rate him due to his volatile tackling.

Otherwise we tend to let Crewe develop our players and then seem to get about 75% success rate with them regardless of performances for Crewe! Although for every Pope there is a Richard Walker I suppose.

 

[Saddlerrad]

Think Kinsella is a decent league 1 full back at the moment actually, not exactly the most adventurous going forwards, which I suspect may be due to confidence/inexperience and will come with time. But defensively he is solid, he did very well yesterday against one of the league's better wingers in Murphy whilst also not having a right winger to cover him too.

Kieron Morris for me is a brighter prospect than Flanagan who just doesn't turn up in first team games. Rocket of a left foot, very strong on the ball and hard to tackle and also had a half decent engine too. Reminds me of Paterson before he got really good, too many blind alleys and does go missing in games. Matt Preston is also a very solid and reliable centre half to have on the bench, don't think I have seen him have a bad game, and the one where he made a mistake (Chesterfield at home) he scored in. He can be a very good league 1 centre half if he keeps putting in good performances. He is hard yet precise in the tackle, a great header of the ball and isn't terrible on the ball like you would expect from a Butler esc centre half. Hopefully Bakayoko can do a Kieron Morris and revitalise his career in the last 6 months of his contract.

From our current youth team I have heard good things about Mazi Kouyhar, Jordan Sangha and Dan Jezeph (who has been on the bench a few times this season.)

Forgot Preston and Morris, I like Morris a lot. Surprised he hasn't been playing much recently but SOD seems to have favoured Forde and Cook off the bench. Prestons a rough as they come lower league centre back, could have a good career at his level.

Morris is like Milan in the sense of 'will he won't he' when it comes to things clicking for them and moving onto the Championship. My thoughts are that Morris will and Milan will be forever too inconsistent and frustrating.

 

[Football Purist]

We're always strong at youth level so there's usually a few good prospects on the horizon for us.

 

[DH84]

Dh84

 

[Zeus]

Erm... None currently although high hopes on Kapend and Smith who is on loan at Torquay but we've tended to have a policy under Smurf of bringing in players such as Andoh, Hugill, Campion who are fairly young and raw and that's worked with Andoh and Hugill.

The only decent product that's come through recently in Sam Morsy (although hasn't Raglan done ok?) should make some money at least with the sell on clause but Micky didn't rate him due to his volatile tackling.

Otherwise we tend to let Crewe develop our players and then seem to get about 75% success rate with them regardless of performances for Crewe! Although for every Pope there is a Richard Walker I suppose.

Raglan's featuring fairly regularly this season, coming along nicely. His distribution is erratic but he is solid as they come and will clearly improve with experience.

 

[Millwall_Matt]

Current first teamers:

Sid Nelson (19)
2 years away from being ready for first team football, but Holloway made him captain in the championship last year. Millwall fan.

Fred Onyedinma (19)
Talented midfielder with an eye for a goal. Already got 50 professional appearances behind him scoring 12 goals. Needs more consistency to move up the leagues and has been awesome and awful in equal measure this year.

John Marquis (23)
Too little too late from Marquis, despite his good record for Gills last year. Won't make it with us and needs a move to restart his career. Millwall fan.

Aiden O'Brien (22)
Talented Irishman with 9 goals in 32 appearances up front for us. Just signed a new long-term contract having won a POTM award earlier this season. Probably the most highly anticipated talent we have.

Ben Thompson (20)
Aggressive central midfielder with a good shot on him. Only played 15 games or so, but looks likely to be a regular in the next year or so. Millwall fan.

The next batch:

Jamie Philpot
Scored on début at Wolves, got injured and only just back in training. Harris rates very highly.

Noah Chesmain
Left back who scores wonder goals. 30 odd minutes into his pro-career but looked decent.

Alfie Pavey
Young target man signed after a season banging in 124 goals for Maidstone. Half a dozen very short first team call-ups haven't really given him enough time to show what he can do, but scored on début at Aldershot in the conf. Millwall fan.

The rest:
Kris Twardek, Kyron Farrell, Keaton Wood - all played first team minutes, but not enough to judge as yet.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Otherwise we tend to let Crewe develop our players and then seem to get about 75% success rate with them regardless of performances for Crewe! Although for every Pope there is a Richard Walker I suppose.

I wouldn't say you've had that much more success than us with our (ex) players. I'll admit, I always thought Tom Pope was crap and laughed when someone paid money for him but he did alright. The rest have all done by and large as they did for us. Roberts was always a cock but decent at football, O'Connor did good for us and was constructively ousted in a icky period, Yates was released whilst we were flying in the Champ and he hasn't hit that level, Ajay did us good service in L2 despite reputation, Byron is Byron and is at his level and Grant is ace but not value for money, obviously.

That said, I'd have a Dave Brammer in his prime over that lot any day.