The large clubs with the best coaching staff should realise that their academies have the potential to produce the best players. I know that occasionally they do produce good players but it is not enough. Look at Chelsea: the brightest talent is supposed to be Josh McEachran. He has been their ‘brightest talent’ for years but does he get any real playing time? And who else have Chelsea produced that has made a name for themselves? John Terry? Well done, one player in the last ten years who was any good.
Since the announcement of the fair play regulations there have been movements by a lot of clubs to recruit young players to their academies, but there are two problems with this. Firstly, if you recruit a player at eighteen it’s not quite the same thing as them being a product of your academy, and secondly, once again teams are only doing this because of money.
The lack of sufficient coaching and good academies in this country is a real problem and instead of simply pandering to the top clubs the FA and the Premier League should have got together, worked out how to increase incentives for all clubs to produce their own players and provide better protection for the parent clubs that do so. Instead of thinking that relying on home grown players is a recipe for disaster, clubs should view their academies as the perfect tool to complement their first team squad.
This is something that not many teams have got right in recent years. Arsenal have tried but have leant a bit too much towards their youth and others like Chelsea have basically ignored their graduates. There is a common ground, but perhaps clubs need a helping hand from the authorities to get there.
Written by Hamish McKay for FootballFancast.com. Follow Hamish on Twitter @H_Mackay
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