The_Rorab

I'd forgotten about the likes of Reed and Gallagher, and the likes of Targett etc making some decent money - which is one of the big things we never seem to do - all our academy outs seem to either be releases or very minimal fees to lower league or foreign sides.

Since I love doing research I've gone and looked at the last 5/6 years of Southampton academy Premier League playtime versus ours. Leicester 2017/18 - 29 starts/46 total apps - Chilwell (20+4), King (5+6), Hamza (4+4), Barnes (0+3) 2018/19 - 54 starts/61 total apps - Chilwell (36), Barnes (11+5), Hamza (7+2) 2019/20 - 64 starts/88 total apps - Chilwell (27), Barnes (24+12), Hamza (10+10), Thomas (3), Hirst (0+2) 2020/21 - 39 starts/52 total apps - Barnes (22+3), Thomas (12+2), Hamza (4+6), Tavares (1+1), Leshabela (0+1) 2021/22 - 72 starts/90 total apps - Barnes (24+8), KDH (23+5), Thomas (21+1), Hamza (4+2), Brunt (0+1), McAteer (0+1) 2022/23 - 47 starts/51 total apps - Barnes (20), KDH (19+1), Thomas (8+2), Brunt (0+1) Southampton 2017/18 - 46 starts/68 total apps - Stephens (22), JWP (20+10), Targett (2), McQueen (1+6), Sims (1+5), Obafemi (0+1) 2018/19 - 77 starts/111 total apps - JWP (21+5), Valery (20+3), Stephens (19+5), Targett (13+3), Sims (2+5), Obafemi (1+5), Slattery (1+2), Gallagher (0+4), Johnson (0+1), Ramsay (0+1) 2019/20 - 88 starts/109 total apps - JWP (38), Stephens (27+1), Valery (10+1), Obafemi (8+13), Smallbone (4+5), Vokins (1), Tella (0+1) 2020/21 - 66 starts/101 total apps - JWP (38), Stephens (17+1), Tella (7+11), Smallbone (2+1), Jankewitz (1+1), Ramsay (1), N'Lundulu (0+13), Obafemi (0+4), Watts (0+3), Tchaptchet (0+1) 2021/22 - 60 starts/70 total apps - JWP (36), Tella (10+4), Stephens (9+2), Valery (3+2), Smallbone (2+2) 2022/23 - 26 starts/29 total apps - JWP (23), Larios (2+3), Valery (1) Technically, Theo Walcott is a Southampton academy graduate and has made appearances but I really didn't think he fit the criteria of what I was specifically looking at given he was bought back to the club as a 30+ year old veteran! Southampton's straight-up numbers are larger than ours in all but this and last season, but I think the biggest difference is the amount of opportunities afforded to academy players. With us you seem to either be an integral part of the squad or you're lucky to play a game off the bench, whereas Southampton generally will throw in a youngster or two whenever they want - though having said that I can't really say I know much about any of the peripheral Southampton youth players and none of them really seem to have made much of an impact on the first team long-term - though I know at least Smallbone and Tella have Championship loans this season. Not really analysing anything - I don't exactly think Southampton are the model of a club to follow right now so even if they're affording more opportunities to academy players I don't know if I think copying Southampton is a good idea! I do think though that being an academy player at Southampton probably feels more likely to afford you a chance in the first team than at Leicester, especially given our utter reticence to loan players out - which is how all bar Thomas of our regulars made their way into our first team! However, from a quick glance, I'd definitely say the pickings are sparse if you aren't named James Ward-Prowse at Southampton in the last 5/6 years, with Jack Stephens and Yan Valery the only other regular names - but Stephens is currently on loan at Bournemouth and rarely playing there, and Valery has been sold due to not really showing Premier League level quality.

I mean there's a bit of a difference between being pleased he's not in the starting lineup and saying that he stinks the place out every time he plays, no? One is probably universally agreed upon, and the other is just an insult. Albeit looking back, you've got a more reasonable take on things in that you aren't just calling him complete shite like some people, I've no qualms about being pleased he can be moved back onto the bench, but I don't think it's strange to see people defending him when you have people coming to the thread to say he's an abject footballer etc when he clearly isn't. He's just not quite good enough to be a regular starter for a team that wants more than just survival.

I'd be surprised if we even sent one of them out on loan let alone all 4.

I'd like to point out by the way that I added the pithy "and probably give them a long-term injury or two" comment before I had read that Braybrooke has gone off injured. You couldn't bloody write this stuff.

So I decided in my frustration at the fact we're just utterly dross at loans and sending players out on loan to look at the 19 other Prem clubs to see how many youth players they have out on loan comparative to us. I've made some judgement calls on players as to whether they count (anyone above 24 I've not counted and anyone that I'd consider far more of a first team squad player before the loan I haven't counted.) Arsenal: 15 players loaned out Aston Villa: 16 players loaned out Bournemouth: 12 players loaned out Brentford: 10 players loaned out Brighton: 21 players loaned out Chelsea: 24 players loaned out Crystal Palace: 16 players loaned out Everton: 12 players loaned out Fulham: 17 players loaned out Leeds: 11 players loaned out Liverpool: 18 players loaned out Man City: 19 players loaned out Man U: 11 players loaned out Newcastle: 9 players loaned out Nottm Forest: 15 players loaned out Southampton: 13 players loaned out Tottenham: 4 players loaned out West Ham: 10 players loaned out Wolves: 17 players loaned out Other than notable outlier Spurs with their 4, and I guess maybe Newcastle with 9, there's no club below 10 loans this season. Let's move onto us. Leicester: 6 players loaned out, of those currently only 4 are still loaned out and 2 of them are Eppiah and Hirst who are 24 and 23 and who I don't think have any future at the club. Albeit I haven't exactly dissected every loanee on other teams to see if I think they're probably loans that aren't for the sake of development versus just getting them out, but it's horrific reading imo - and anyone who says things like oh well there has to be interest in our youth players for us to loan them out is frankly ridiculous imo unless you're saying that basically all 19 other Premier league clubs magically all had teams interested in their players and we just for some unknowable reason didn't. Questions imo have to be asked of our club (I mean, other than the hundreds of other reasons that questions have to asked of our shambles of a club rn) - why are we not loaning out players and not really blooding any of them either? They're just sitting in the U21s, until they're aged out and then that's that for most of them when at nearly every other club they'd be getting league football to test their mettle and see if they have what it takes. Hell, most of our youth products are only where they are because of loans - KDH and Barnes got their chances with us directly because of stellar loan spells. Hamza, Liam Moore, Chilwell and Schlupp back a while back had loans before we blooded them in. Only Thomas has jumped straight into the first team and honestly I think the jury is still out as to whether he's good enough yet for a place in a Prem team. It just screams of the same vibe that runs through the club at the moment, that we have no idea what we're actually doing, and are just puttering along mindlessly hoping it all magically resolves itself - that Top will wave his magic wand and fix the multiple glaring issues at the club. In all honesty I don't know if I would want to join us as a youth player at this point in time - we just seem to collect players, never play them until they're at least 22 if we ever do, rarely loan them out, if they're a striker ignore them to play midfielders up front, and probably give them a long-term injury or two.

I think your first mistake was assuming there's any sort of coherency and planning that goes into our U21 setup.

The real thing for me is that if Rodgers doesn't think a player like Braybrooke can handle a few minutes at the end of a cup game to bottom of League 2 - what makes me think at any point any other game will be the one he does give him a go?

I don't mean it as an attack - I just feel more and more jaded every time Rodgers lauds himself as a paragon of integrating youth players into teams whilst doing his utmost to seemingly never actually blood youth players. The games at the end of the last season against Norwich, Watford and Southampton which were ostensibly dead rubbers and he talked about the possibility of academy players seeing some action only to not even put any on the bench - including against Norwich only putting 8 players on the bench with a spot free instead of a youth player. He's mentioned other games I'm pretty sure as possibilities for youth players and then not delivered on it a few times. I just feel like I constantly see Rodgers either bigging himself up or being promoted in the media as this youth-playing dynamo, without any actual evidence from his time here of doing so without being forced into it via injury (Thomas). KDH I think is the only one I can think of and that was after a stellar loan spell, not being blooded into the team - maybe I'm missing other examples? I really hope you're right and Braybrooke (amongst others) get more chances. You look around at other clubs and most of them are doing it - most other clubs have at least one or two academy players on the bench, or in the starting lineup nearly every week. I think I can count on one hand the number of games we've had any on the bench for a while. Yet with a manager who apparently trusts youth, who has a squad he's vocally mostly unhappy with and complains about our depth we basically never see any youth players actually in a position to get any meaningful gametime - and there's loads of soundbites about not risking players not being ready, or shoring up games to take no risks, but we seem to be about the only club that has this perspective on it - as I've said, most other clubs don't seem averse to throwing some kids on as subs, even in tight games. I'm not saying they're all gonna be world beaters, but in a squad that's seemingly disaffected in large, with real gaps in it, with rumours of funds not necessarily being plentiful I just can't fathom not at least giving some players more of a go to make some sort of an impact instead of seeing yet another ineffectual performance out of Ayoze Perez, or deciding to have both Vestergaard and Soyuncu on the bench. To complain about the lack of depth and quality and to not even consider seeing what our academy players can do strikes me as either our academy has far less quality than we think, or Rodgers refuses to even consider the idea that maybe if we're struggling for money that it might be prudent to see what if any holes we can fill from within.

It's wild to me people saying he'll get his chance after every single time Rodgers has the chance to blood him and chooses not to. On what basis do people think Rodgers is gonna give him minutes other than hope?

Ndidi, Soumare and KDH as a midfield trio is... worrying. Also would have liked to see Braybrooke as an option on the bench with Youri out. Hopefully we can somehow pull off something mad but I'm not hopeful.

I actually played football on the same team as him as a youth! I'm not sure I have the ability to throw stones at his ability though given my relative ability

What gets me about Brunt is that I don't understand what the club wants with him. He's 22 and he hasn't been afforded even the late loan like KDH to prove himself. But he's not even preferred over Vestergaard as a sub option so he's clearly not in first team plans at any point either. He's never gonna play here unless he gets one of the 2 things above, and even if he isn't gonna make it here we won't get a fee for him unless we let him play football somewhere to attract any interest. So what are we doing with him other than just using him as desperate emergency cover to probably eventually released him for no money at the expiry of his contract?

Almost like he's a bit of a cult hero or something

Aren't you the poster who was adamant George Hirst was good enough to start for us and should be playing like 1/2 years ago when he'd been universally bad on every loan at the time?

Oh no absolutely, I agree with you there. Given the opportunity of playing for say Man City/Arsenal or Newcastle I think he'd pick the big 6 club every day. I just don't necessarily think a team currently winning trophies is going to buy him, for right or for wrong.

Some cynical part of me wonders if by specifying a number that gives him the leeway if we don't make say 4 signings to complain after the window that he hasn't been backed anough again and continue to spin the narrative if things go sour again. Hopefully it means what you suggested though, I'd love a window of getting rid of as much deadwood as possible and getting some decent players in that fit the profile of our previous signings - relatively young, not on massive wages and with the scope to be sold on for a huge profit in the future.

I'm pretty sure very similar things were aimed at Man City when they were newly taken over and aiming to splash the cash - and look where they are now. It doesn't matter that right now they're not an elite team - they're gonna be aiming to emulate Man City's rise to prominence and have the money to back it up. If they offer Maddison a big wage rise, making him a key part of a team with a very likely upwards trajectory given said amount of money, which could push him into England contention too I have no doubt he'd be willing to go there.

I mean, you can't in my opinion blame Fofana for wanting the Chelsea move - they're a huge club where he'll be earning a lot more money and regularly competing for major honours. You can however blame Fofana for how he went about securing that move. It's not really double standards when Maddison has never downed tools and metaphorically thrown a tantrum to force a move.

Based on Brendan's standard approach to team selections I'm confident it'll just be the same 11 with Praet dropping back out for Maddison. Which I think is definitely the wrong decision, but let's hope it pans out because being dead last, losing and giving Wolves a bigger gap ahead of us and then getting smashed by Man City is gonna be a rough time, especially given we're likely stuck with Rodgers until the World Cup at minimum.

I do think that today's game 100% confirms that there's no way any academy player gets on the pitch without a spate of injuries at this point. If at 2-0 up, with KDH who was clearly gassed, with basically no time to go Braybrooke can't get on as a late time-wasting, experience-granting sub, then I don't see another circumstance where he would get on the pitch.

I think it's more that the alternative is Amartey. It's not that Soyuncu necessarily deserves to start but we need a more capable option at CB than Big Dan and Soyuncu has at least at some point in his career with us shown himself to be a capable player. Whether that's still the case or not now is up for debate, but we can't know unless he actually plays a game now. Honestly, I'd take Lewis Brunt having a go at this point even as a backup CB, but considering injured Soyuncu seems to be preferred on the bench to Brunt I highly doubt that will happen, and it may not be a good idea to throw in an inexperienced CB into our shambles. It'd be a nice risk to take though, at least it'd be trying something else out other than the tedium of our current malaise.

Who's got the quote about before Brendan we were a team just happy to survive in the league not long after our title win and repeated top half finishes?

I definitely think this shows he has the capability to play some tidy stuff and I hope it continues going forward, but I can't help but notice just how much time on the ball he has in a lot of these clips. There's some good play under pressure a few times as well, but you have to assume most other clubs are gonna press a lot better than Forest did.

Surely if Ndidi and Mendy are both gonna miss the game then this has to be the time to put Braybrooke after his really impressive form for the unders, or at the very least one of our academy players onto the bench for the next game?