We're a different animal now, we're an attractive prospect to youngsters from all around Europe and from across the pond and that was never the case before. It took La Masia a while to build its foundations but I believe ours have now been built and we'll start benefiting in the next 5 years, Pep has now got the average age of the squad down and I believe he'll start ticking it over with a blend of transfers and youth, Foden and Brahim will no doubt be regular squad members next season.
You've got every right to throw negativity at the Academy due to it's track record but we've got the right people in the right places and invested too much into it for it not to work, we're the model that everyone in Europe are currently looking at and like I say expect to see the best youngsters from Europe and South America to be rocking up soon. We're ahead of the game as we can't keep relying on the cheque book every window, especially with the way the fees are currently going.
We need to be patient but the tree will soon start to bear fruit, both to drip feed the squad and also to raise profit from our findings.
Apologies for long post ahead, but I honestly don't understand why I need to be patient mate & I'll endeavour to explain why.
I'm sure it's true the best youngsters will be rocking up soon, as they have been for many many years. The likely difference being that after the initial publicity drive, many outside the academy now see City's whole youth system as a scam, & indeed the rag press now run a negative story on it daily, imo as part of a concerted effort by Utd to muscle in. Which will, without a shadow of a doubt, have affected the percentage of top British talent we have been able to aquire in recent times, wheras we were pretty much incomparable as a choice, when the promises of academy success were first made, with much national publicity.
So we will recently have been losing a percentage of 'local' players to Utd, Liverpool Everton etc right now, & can try to replace them with Brazilians etc etc then we can regain our historical, high reputation for producing players & hopefully become the power we should already be, at that level.
Because it's no exaggeration to say that we have become the Liverpool of football academies. But instead of 'next year's our year' it's become 'five years' time is our year'.
There has been an interesting debate on this over the years but imo a lot of the arguments have been completely devoid of logic.
1: nobody has ever explained to me, why, when we had one of the, if not THE best youth system in Europe, that moving it to a brand new location suddenly means that everything which happened before, is no longer counted.
'It's only just opened, give it a chance' was the word (& still is).
Which is effectively the same as saying Tottenham Hotspur, will have 'only just opened' when they move to their new ground, next season, so Harry Kane etc, don't actually exist, they need a whole new set of players & five years coaching, to see any reward (ok not the best example, as they'll still do fuck all, but you get my point). All that happened was, we moved the academy premises, to improved facilities. We already had a load of players & coaches there who were rated as highly as any, anywhere else, except maybe Barca (but we have a City player there, right now).
And before the takeover, we had a bunch of highly rated players here then. And we had a bunch of them before that, & several in the first team squad, in fact ten years ago, several of them took 6 points off Utd, who had a much better team than they have ever had, since then.
Prior to that, we had a tradition of bringing through quality young players (destroyed for a fair while, during the Peter Reid/ Kendall period) & our earlier successes were all built on a bedrock of home grown players, Tony Book's teams, Mercer's team & so on back into history.
So when you mention being patient, I don't understand why I'm being patient waiting for us to do something, we have been doing, all my life & all my parents & grandparents' lives.
2) Is the argument 'it's impossible to produce players for a team of City's quality'. It's an excuse invented by football clubs & academies in general, for their abject failure to find, coach & bring through, top level players. That's all he clubs here, not just us (a look at the England team shows it & Scotland are even worse).
Some still argue this is a valid excuse.
Well if that's the case, where are the players in City's team & Chelsea's team etc all coming from ? 'Somebody, somewhere' has produced all of them. Every single player we have signed, since the takeover, has been produced by someone's youth system, somewhere on he planet.
During that period, how many players have come through at City to join them on a regular basis ? Not one. How many have looked like they will be used on a regular basis as genuine fill in, 'squad players' ?
I'd say Boyata, Iheancho & now Zinchenko. So from the 'academy' only Boyata that I can think of, we brought he other two in.
Imo that is not a coincidence. It pretty much ended when we got the money. It's easier for managers, to spend money, so that's what they have done. Pep seems as if he wants to change that, when he can, but imo he should have been handed fully trained club produced players, by the previous two managers, not be srtarting from scratch.
3) It would have harmed our chances, to use young players.
It didn't do Ferguson any harm, & Guardiola has a centre mid playing fullback right now. At Barca, he used scores of young players, some just for one game each. Most weren't 'good enough' but he found as use for them to fill in. Same with Ferguson at he swamp (& even Mourinho).
Young players have always been involved here & there in successful teams, helping take the weight off the squad. It doesn't matter whether they are as good as David Silva, or Leroy Sane, only that they can do ten minutes here & there, to stop the senior players prevent injury or maybe give them a day off. If you are lucky, one takes to the intensity, steps up & becomes a star.
We are seeing that happening right now, with Zinchenko. He may still not make it, but we can see, right in front of us, a player improving before our eyes.
I was watching kids do that in our team & everybody else's first team, when I was less than half their age, & I only stopped seeing it happen at City, when City got loads of money & now, because of that, i don't go to kids' games anymore as I know I'm getting excited for no reason when tey play well, & no matter how good they are, they won't make it.
Imo, there are two simple arguments: Either A) it's impossible for academies to produce top players (in which case shut them down & do something else).
Or B) the players are there, but are not getting through, in which case it should have been fixed by our club & every club, years ago.
Either way, it's a fucking mess countrywide & we are at the bottom imo, & I think I've had enough patience over the years, waiting for us to do something we should already be doing.
Sorry for the long post but I was watching City's kids when I was younger than them & football was black & white & now I'm older than the chairman, the current system has been the least successful I've ever seen in my lifetime & cost the most money.
Consequently, I don't bother going to watch it anymore.