2019/20 Under 23's, U19's, Development ... thread

[Foxxed]

2 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

Ben Petty said on LCFC.COM... 

 

"I thought Filip, obviously coming down from the senior squad, [he was a] model professional. He was very, very solid."

 

For those that watched it, is that a fair assessment ?? Did he look fit ??

 

 

He looked decent not flashy or eye catching but decent. He didn't really exert himself but he looked vaguely fit.

[Ric Flair]

I'm still mystified that another year goes by with the same people running it. The technical ability of our teams compared with so many other youth teams like Norwich, Reading, Everton, Brighton etc is quite startling. Given our ambitions to become the epicenter of top class training facilities soon, why does our academy setup feel out of sync with the first team? 

 

Rodgers got his own way with Congerton, let's hope he can convince Rudkin that something needs doing with the Academy. So much for a whole host of the U18's being promoted to the U23's, it feels like Beaglehole did it at the end of the season and can now use the hammerings we got as justification to go back to picking a load of 22 year olds that will never ever play first team football for us.

[Nicolo Barella]

Please. At least Ughelumba and Pascanu on loan to League 1. Luke Thomas is a great leftback and we have too many decent centrebacks in our U23 squad. Those two loans need to happen.

[Shane]

Johansson, Johnson, Pascanu, Ughelumba, Muskwe & maybe even Reghba all need to go out on loan

 

Leshabela too if he's not in Brendan's plan

[davieG]

47 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I'm still mystified that another year goes by with the same people running it. The technical ability of our teams compared with so many other youth teams like Norwich, Reading, Everton, Brighton etc is quite startling. Given our ambitions to become the epicenter of top class training facilities soon, why does our academy setup feel out of sync with the first team? 

 

Rodgers got his own way with Congerton, let's hope he can convince Rudkin that something needs doing with the Academy. So much for a whole host of the U18's being promoted to the U23's, it feels like Beaglehole did it at the end of the season and can now use the hammerings we got as justification to go back to picking a load of 22 year olds that will never ever play first team football for us.

Well he was able to see for himself....

 

Leicester first-team boss Brendan Rodgers was also in attendance to watch the young Foxes in action.

[Foxxed]

58 minutes ago, Shane said:

Johansson, Johnson, Pascanu, Ughelumba, Muskwe & maybe even Reghba all need to go out on loan

 

Leshabela too if he's not in Brendan's plan

 

I really doubt there are loads of league one clubs who are biting our hands off for all of the above. Reghba only just arrived. Give him until Christmas before loaning.

 

1 hour ago, Ric Flair said:

I'm still mystified that another year goes by with the same people running it. The technical ability of our teams compared with so many other youth teams like Norwich, Reading, Everton, Brighton etc is quite startling. Given our ambitions to become the epicenter of top class training facilities soon, why does our academy setup feel out of sync with the first team? 

 

Rodgers got his own way with Congerton, let's hope he can convince Rudkin that something needs doing with the Academy. So much for a whole host of the U18's being promoted to the U23's, it feels like Beaglehole did it at the end of the season and can now use the hammerings we got as justification to go back to picking a load of 22 year olds that will never ever play first team football for us.

Petty was in charge last night. Didn't notice much difference in play tbh.

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

Well he was able to see for himself....

 

Leicester first-team boss Brendan Rodgers was also in attendance to watch the young Foxes in action.

He looks horrified and rightly so.

[Foxxed]

19 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

He looks horrified and rightly so.

I'm a little annoyed Bren didn't give any u23s squad numbers. We had Darnell and Hamza last year iirc. Gives them a bit of a boost. But tbh there isn't anyone shining like Knight, Hamza, Barnes or Chilwell. Maybe Ughelumba but he's got fierce competition from Luke Thomas who's my tip for the future. Looks like Tavares is back in the u18s.

[Guest SO1]

4 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

I'm still mystified that another year goes by with the same people running it. The technical ability of our teams compared with so many other youth teams like Norwich, Reading, Everton, Brighton etc is quite startling. Given our ambitions to become the epicenter of top class training facilities soon, why does our academy setup feel out of sync with the first team? 

 

Rodgers got his own way with Congerton, let's hope he can convince Rudkin that something needs doing with the Academy. So much for a whole host of the U18's being promoted to the U23's, it feels like Beaglehole did it at the end of the season and can now use the hammerings we got as justification to go back to picking a load of 22 year olds that will never ever play first team football for us.

You warned me and I refused to believe. Sorry I doubted you as I refused to believe the club could be so misguided. 

Still holding out with a bit of optimism but that's waning quickly.

Rodgers being there shows that he still cares what is going on and still has a part to play in this. I hope.

Still think their waiting on a specific person but that's blind belief on my part. Watching and waiting.

Edited 20 August 2019 by SO1

[mancunianfox]

You'd think a change before we moved to the new training ground would be wise as surely the biggest part of the team to benefit would be the academy. It would be a shame to waste such an opportunity.

 

I suppose the difficult thing for Rudkin is that we named Chilwell, Barnes and Hamza in our match day squad to start the season - two of those started and one came off the bench and did well. Not many other PL sides have three academy graduates in their match day squad and involved with the England setup so they could easily see it as doing its job just fine. Academies only need to produce one player every three or four years to be considered successful nowadays.

[Ric Flair]

2 hours ago, Foxxed said:

I'm a little annoyed Bren didn't give any u23s squad numbers. We had Darnell and Hamza last year iirc. Gives them a bit of a boost. But tbh there isn't anyone shining like Knight, Hamza, Barnes or Chilwell. Maybe Ughelumba but he's got fierce competition from Luke Thomas who's my tip for the future. Looks like Tavares is back in the u18s.

Quite telling how Rodgers had the likes of Fitzhugh, Russ, Tavares and Pennant on the bench in pre-season and yet none of them are immediately involved in the U23's once again. Now, that might be because the U23's had friendlies in close proximity to the 1st team friendlies, I can't quite remember but I'm staggered as to the obsession with hanging on to 20+ year olds who appear to have no chance of making it. Loan them out and of we can't do that then they are either released or play 2nd fiddle to the most promising U18's.

 

Conor Tee is a fine example, got academy player of the year in 17/18 and was lethal for the U18's. He has been promoted to the U23's but barely ever gets a chance, bizarre. The pathway is dog shit and yes we may have produced 3 England U21/senior players and that's great news but we can improve and should improve our methods.

[Nicolo Barella]

6 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Quite telling how Rodgers had the likes of Fitzhugh, Russ, Tavares and Pennant on the bench in pre-season and yet none of them are immediately involved in the U23's once again. Now, that might be because the U23's had friendlies in close proximity to the 1st team friendlies, I can't quite remember but I'm staggered as to the obsession with hanging on to 20+ year olds who appear to have no chance of making it. Loan them out and of we can't do that then they are either released or play 2nd fiddle to the most promising U18's.

 

Conor Tee is a fine example, got academy player of the year in 17/18 and was lethal for the U18's. He has been promoted to the U23's but barely ever gets a chance, bizarre. The pathway is dog shit and yes we may have produced 3 England U21/senior players and that's great news but we can improve and should improve our methods.

That also might be because some of them are literally 15 years old tbf

[Foxxed]

15 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Quite telling how Rodgers had the likes of Fitzhugh, Russ, Tavares and Pennant on the bench in pre-season and yet none of them are immediately involved in the U23's once again. Now, that might be because the U23's had friendlies in close proximity to the 1st team friendlies, I can't quite remember but I'm staggered as to the obsession with hanging on to 20+ year olds who appear to have no chance of making it. Loan them out and of we can't do that then they are either released or play 2nd fiddle to the most promising U18's.

 

Conor Tee is a fine example, got academy player of the year in 17/18 and was lethal for the U18's. He has been promoted to the U23's but barely ever gets a chance, bizarre. The pathway is dog shit and yes we may have produced 3 England U21/senior players and that's great news but we can improve and should improve our methods.

I'm assuming having some older lads around is good for the younger ones. If we play the u18s every match and get thumped then I'm not sure how this will help anyone's development. 22 year old George Thomas is really too old for the u23s but if he can supply 19 year old Regheba then I'm happy. There has to be a balance. If these ages are right then we had mostly 19/20 year olds last match with the exception of G Thomas, Hughes, Jak and Benk https://us.soccerway.com/teams/england/leicester-city-u23/37159/ That's not too bad tbh.

 

Incidentally Hughes was sporting a monumental mardy when he was subbed for Pasc. Hughes seemed to be getting further up the pitch too without massive success.

Edited 20 August 2019 by Foxxed

[The_Rorab]

I've been very curious about my own pre-conception that we tend to hoard players in the u23 squad and tend to play players that are mostly 20 and over, rather than loan them out - so to that end, I've taken to looking at our squads and our opponents' and comparing the average ages of each.

 

We played Everton last week, and drew - though the stats making it look like we were mullered - albeit having had Darnell sent off early 2nd half.

In that game we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19 on the bench.

In comparison, Everton's average starting lineup age was 19.5, and 18 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

We just played Blackburn, and drew - with the stats looking pretty level. 

We had Jakupovic and Benkovic in the starting lineup, but just counting the academy players, we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19.4 on the bench,

In comparison, Blackburn's average starting lineup age was actually 20.6, and 18.4 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

 

So I wouldn't say from the first 2 games' evidence that we have a drastically older u23 squad per se - but there are still some notable things that I picked up on.

Between the two games, we pretty much changed the entire back line - from the Everton game's Johansson, Clark, Pascanu, Johnson, Ughelumba to Jakupovic, Daley-Campbell, Benkovic, Hughes, Ughelumba with the rest of the team unchanged.

According to the stats (which were the ones on google, since I couldn't find any stats listed elsewhere, so I can't 100% vouch for them), in both games we had less than 50% possession (37% and 46%) - and in the Everton game, though probably due to being down to 10 men, our pass accuracy was apparently 59% - though I can't find a similar stat for the Blackburn game, so it's not statistically significant due to the red card and limited data.

 

All in all, I'm not super impressed with the picture that paints so far, as well as having looked at our fixtures, and finding out that our U23's have gone 13 competitive games without winning - though of course technically the u23 shouldn't be about winning per se, but with the feeling that we're not really progressing with our development squad, that makes that stat kind of stark reading. Despite finding out that I was wrong so far when it comes to playing an older average age than our opponents thusfar, I still think we're behind a lot of other clubs when it comes to development squads - and I'd like to see something change in terms of loaning a few players out, as well as just a style change in terms of how we play, that would move us more in line with how our first team plays.

 

With regards to loans, of course it's all down to actually having an interested party to take said players on loan, but I feel like we do have a pretty bloated squad - for example we have Reghba, Muskwe, Hirst, Uche, Eppiah all on the books up front - all in the 19-21 age range, and when fit, we will never be able to consistently use all of them. Also, whilst again, finding a club interested to take a player on loan might be tough, we managed to find a club in League 2 interested in Ryan Loft. The Ryan Loft that has been absolutely slated on here for looking garbage, so surely we can shift some other players on loan? 

[Nicolo Barella]

37 minutes ago, The_Rorab said:

I've been very curious about my own pre-conception that we tend to hoard players in the u23 squad and tend to play players that are mostly 20 and over, rather than loan them out - so to that end, I've taken to looking at our squads and our opponents' and comparing the average ages of each.

 

We played Everton last week, and drew - though the stats making it look like we were mullered - albeit having had Darnell sent off early 2nd half.

In that game we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19 on the bench.

In comparison, Everton's average starting lineup age was 19.5, and 18 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

We just played Blackburn, and drew - with the stats looking pretty level. 

We had Jakupovic and Benkovic in the starting lineup, but just counting the academy players, we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19.4 on the bench,

In comparison, Blackburn's average starting lineup age was actually 20.6, and 18.4 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

 

So I wouldn't say from the first 2 games' evidence that we have a drastically older u23 squad per se - but there are still some notable things that I picked up on.

Between the two games, we pretty much changed the entire back line - from the Everton game's Johansson, Clark, Pascanu, Johnson, Ughelumba to Jakupovic, Daley-Campbell, Benkovic, Hughes, Ughelumba with the rest of the team unchanged.

According to the stats (which were the ones on google, since I couldn't find any stats listed elsewhere, so I can't 100% vouch for them), in both games we had less than 50% possession (37% and 46%) - and in the Everton game, though probably due to being down to 10 men, our pass accuracy was apparently 59% - though I can't find a similar stat for the Blackburn game, so it's not statistically significant due to the red card and limited data.

 

All in all, I'm not super impressed with the picture that paints so far, as well as having looked at our fixtures, and finding out that our U23's have gone 13 competitive games without winning - though of course technically the u23 shouldn't be about winning per se, but with the feeling that we're not really progressing with our development squad, that makes that stat kind of stark reading. Despite finding out that I was wrong so far when it comes to playing an older average age than our opponents thusfar, I still think we're behind a lot of other clubs when it comes to development squads - and I'd like to see something change in terms of loaning a few players out, as well as just a style change in terms of how we play, that would move us more in line with how our first team plays.

 

With regards to loans, of course it's all down to actually having an interested party to take said players on loan, but I feel like we do have a pretty bloated squad - for example we have Reghba, Muskwe, Hirst, Uche, Eppiah all on the books up front - all in the 19-21 age range, and when fit, we will never be able to consistently use all of them. Also, whilst again, finding a club interested to take a player on loan might be tough, we managed to find a club in League 2 interested in Ryan Loft. The Ryan Loft that has been absolutely slated on here for looking garbage, so surely we can shift some other players on loan? 

Just like to point out that this is because they're under an underage player transfer ban, so they can ONLY use players from their academy.

[Ric Flair]

2 hours ago, The_Rorab said:

I've been very curious about my own pre-conception that we tend to hoard players in the u23 squad and tend to play players that are mostly 20 and over, rather than loan them out - so to that end, I've taken to looking at our squads and our opponents' and comparing the average ages of each.

 

We played Everton last week, and drew - though the stats making it look like we were mullered - albeit having had Darnell sent off early 2nd half.

In that game we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19 on the bench.

In comparison, Everton's average starting lineup age was 19.5, and 18 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

We just played Blackburn, and drew - with the stats looking pretty level. 

We had Jakupovic and Benkovic in the starting lineup, but just counting the academy players, we had an average age of 19.8 in the starting lineup, and 19.4 on the bench,

In comparison, Blackburn's average starting lineup age was actually 20.6, and 18.4 on the bench - with no non-academy players in the squad.

 

 

So I wouldn't say from the first 2 games' evidence that we have a drastically older u23 squad per se - but there are still some notable things that I picked up on.

Between the two games, we pretty much changed the entire back line - from the Everton game's Johansson, Clark, Pascanu, Johnson, Ughelumba to Jakupovic, Daley-Campbell, Benkovic, Hughes, Ughelumba with the rest of the team unchanged.

According to the stats (which were the ones on google, since I couldn't find any stats listed elsewhere, so I can't 100% vouch for them), in both games we had less than 50% possession (37% and 46%) - and in the Everton game, though probably due to being down to 10 men, our pass accuracy was apparently 59% - though I can't find a similar stat for the Blackburn game, so it's not statistically significant due to the red card and limited data.

 

All in all, I'm not super impressed with the picture that paints so far, as well as having looked at our fixtures, and finding out that our U23's have gone 13 competitive games without winning - though of course technically the u23 shouldn't be about winning per se, but with the feeling that we're not really progressing with our development squad, that makes that stat kind of stark reading. Despite finding out that I was wrong so far when it comes to playing an older average age than our opponents thusfar, I still think we're behind a lot of other clubs when it comes to development squads - and I'd like to see something change in terms of loaning a few players out, as well as just a style change in terms of how we play, that would move us more in line with how our first team plays.

 

With regards to loans, of course it's all down to actually having an interested party to take said players on loan, but I feel like we do have a pretty bloated squad - for example we have Reghba, Muskwe, Hirst, Uche, Eppiah all on the books up front - all in the 19-21 age range, and when fit, we will never be able to consistently use all of them. Also, whilst again, finding a club interested to take a player on loan might be tough, we managed to find a club in League 2 interested in Ryan Loft. The Ryan Loft that has been absolutely slated on here for looking garbage, so surely we can shift some other players on loan? 

Good work on this, you raise some very interesting points and immediately my issue is with the sheer number of U23 players we have and them blocking the pathway for our younger players. As you say we have about 10+ defenders in the U23's. 

 

The other issue I have is the playing style is god awful, I try and watch every academy game I can of ours and for nearly a year now the football has declined massively. It's always been a but more physical, fast and direct over technical style but in recent months it's just horrible and at a complete disparity with the type of football our senior side is trying to play.

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, pmcla26 said:

They were involved as the U23’s were away on their pre season tour at the time and they are the next best prospects down. 

 

Probably nothing to do with where they should be in the U23’s, but more like ‘keep working hard, look at Barnes, Hamza and Chilwell - this is where you could be in a few years time’ sort of thing.

Rodgers said after the game he likes to encourage the younger players on what they need to do to make it and by having them involved, even at 16/17 is important. That's why I think its essential they are exposed to U23 football or even out on loan quite soon too. Would much rather strip down the U23 squad and if needs be get match fitness to 2-3 of our fringe first team players and the learning it gives these young players too. I do not want any of our other youngsters having to play their trade with Ryan Loft ever again.

[lfu]

20 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

Good work on this, you raise some very interesting points and immediately my issue is with the sheer number of U23 players we have and them blocking the pathway for our younger players. As you say we have about 10+ defenders in the U23's. 

 

The other issue I have is the playing style is god awful, I try and watch every academy game I can of ours and for nearly a year now the football has declined massively. It's always been a but more physical, fast and direct over technical style but in recent months it's just horrible and at a complete disparity with the type of football our senior side is trying to play.

Which is interesting as Petty mentioned "It's the development squad for a reason, and we're trying to mirror what the first team are doing and their style"

[Ric Flair]

25 minutes ago, lfu said:

Which is interesting as Petty mentioned "It's the development squad for a reason, and we're trying to mirror what the first team are doing and their style"

Yes I read that and let's hope they are serious about doing it, so far it's looked abysmal and if we haven't the coaches to carry it out or the players are unable to learn then fcuk them off. This style of play needs to be taught down in the U18, 16's, 14's etc too so the pathway is seamless.

[Ric Flair]

Still no sign of George Hirst...………...

[jeffschlupp]

I just think we are about 12 months behind on virtually every single player.

 

If you loan Ndukwu out to Southend at the age of 19, he has a good year, you can get him a Championship loan the following year, if he is up to the standard like Barnes was, then he's in your first team by age 21.

 

Knight made his debut for us at Sheffield United two summers ago when he was 19. He should have had a loan off the back of that. Instead, he had another 18 months clogging about in PL2 and is now nearly 21 and still in League One.

 

Johnson goes and wins the U19 Euros with England in July 2017, and again he's sat here for 18 months and eventually got a loan to the mighty Hibs. He's 21 in a fortnight, FFS.

 

I could go on about Elliott Moore or George Thomas too.

 

It just seems to me that the Premier League's idea that players break through at 22-23 is nonsense.

 

Chilwell was 18 and turned 19 while out on loan at Huddersfield in the Championship. Barnes was 19 and turned 20 while at Barnsley too. That's when you know players are going to make it or not, and then 12-18 months down the line both of those players are in our first team. Loans don't work for everyone, in fact they probably didn't help Choudhury too much. But in a squad that's so difficult to break into nowadays, you'd hope the club are desperate to get these boys an opportunity to prove themselves in proper football.

[Foxxed]

2 minutes ago, jeffschlupp said:

I just think we are about 12 months behind on virtually every single player.

 

If you loan Ndukwu out to Southend at the age of 19, he has a good year, you can get him a Championship loan the following year, if he is up to the standard like Barnes was, then he's in your first team by age 21.

 

Knight made his debut for us at Sheffield United two summers ago when he was 19. He should have had a loan off the back of that. Instead, he had another 18 months clogging about in PL2 and is now nearly 21 and still in League One.

 

Johnson goes and wins the U19 Euros with England in July 2017, and again he's sat here for 18 months and eventually got a loan to the mighty Hibs. He's 21 in a fortnight, FFS.

 

I could go on about Elliott Moore or George Thomas too.

 

It just seems to me that the Premier League's idea that players break through at 22-23 is nonsense.

 

Chilwell was 18 and turned 19 while out on loan at Huddersfield in the Championship. Barnes was 19 and turned 20 while at Barnsley too. That's when you know players are going to make it or not, and then 12-18 months down the line both of those players are in our first team. Loans don't work for everyone, in fact they probably didn't help Choudhury too much. But in a squad that's so difficult to break into nowadays, you'd hope the club are desperate to get these boys an opportunity to prove themselves in proper football.

Except of course for our best ever striker based on goals scored. I largely agree though. 

 

That said, the entire squad is largely 19 or 20 now. There's a couple of younger kids of the bench. These lot deserve a season to prove themselves.

[jeffschlupp]

22 minutes ago, Foxxed said:

Except of course for our best ever striker based on goals scored. I largely agree though. 

 

That said, the entire squad is largely 19 or 20 now. There's a couple of younger kids of the bench. These lot deserve a season to prove themselves.

I should rephrase - make it directly with a top half Premier League side.

 

We've let a few go permanently that have stepped down and still done well for themselves, Cedric Kipre at Wigan a good example. I'm not saying you can write off their careers at 21-22 years old, but rather that by that age you'll know if they have a shot at making the first team here or whether they'll have to go elsewhere to do it.

[Guest]

I think some of you wouldn't be happy whatever the setup was. Then again most of the FT posters seem to be unhappy with the first team setup most of the time too. You can't expect many academy players to ever make it into a top 9 prem team. 

 

We seem to be doing a pretty good job.

[Ric Flair]

13 minutes ago, jeffschlupp said:

I should rephrase - make it directly with a top half Premier League side.

 

We've let a few go permanently that have stepped down and still done well for themselves, Cedric Kipre at Wigan a good example. I'm not saying you can write off their careers at 21-22 years old, but rather that by that age you'll know if they have a shot at making the first team here or whether they'll have to go elsewhere to do it.

You are right and it's not impossible for these 21-23 year old academy players to go on and make it at the top level but the way they tend to do it is by reinventing their careers at a lower level and coming back up to the top. I can't remember many 21-23 year old players who have been kept in academies or loaned out year after year then making it directly at the parent club, i'm sure there are the odd case but it seems to stunt both player and younger ones below them by keeping them for the sake of it.