Former Academy Kids

[geoff hammond]

Youth cup final team of 2020 included Harwood-Bellis, Doyle, Delap, Palmer, McAtee and Rogers with Bobb amongst the subs. All six would have been better than some of today's starting eleven!

And if we gave them more game time since then and not sold them we would probably have a better team now.

But not have won 4 in a row and champions league

 

[Cobra]

This is nonsense from Pep. We sold Palmer and Rogers in the summer of 2023 - Sane, Sterling and Silva had long left the club and Mahrez was on his way out too. De Bruyne was clearly past his best too and was struggling with injuries as well.

 

[13/05/12]

It’s a proper hindsite issue but I think we need to seriously review it when Viana arrives. No way we should be diving into the market without assessing the academy and it does feel that’s not been the case from the outside looking at just how many players have left and gone on to success elsewhere. Imagine if our squad was complimented with even half of:

Frimpong
Palmer
Lavia
Rogers
Harwood-Bellis
Delap
Garcia
Couto
Sancho (pinch of salt)

We really should be using the loan system far better in the future than we have been to blood players in the league before deciding to cash in.

Absolutely correct.

Barcelona and Real Madrid can let a talented kid go if there is no space right now but have a clause that allows them to buy them back later (for what would be less than market value). English football doesn't do buy back clauses. We should be utilising loans far better.

 

[Xhavenjoe]

Barcelona and Real Madrid can let a talented kid go if there is no space right now but have a clause that allows them to buy them back later (for what would be less than market value). English football doesn't do buy back clauses. We should be utilising loans far better.

What do you mean by " English football doesn't do buy back clauses" ?

 

[Otamendi's Beard]

Mukasa, Mfuni and Reigan Heskey are nailed on Premier League footballers.

Heskey is miles ahead of where Rogers was at that age.

I want to see them in City shirts. Not Chelsea - like Tosin, Sancho and Palmer are doing today. All would walk into our starting lineup at the moment.

We really need to find a way of keeping the best ones and giving them game time.

 

[IrishBloodEnglishHeart]

This is nonsense from Pep. We sold Palmer and Rogers in the summer of 2023 - Sane, Sterling and Silva had long left the club and Mahrez was on his way out too. De Bruyne was clearly past his best too and was struggling with injuries as well.

Spot on. and what Pep has basically just told all decent academy players is go somewhere else and make it, because it won’t be with City. We’ve got “better players”

 

[13/05/12]

What do you mean by " English football doesn't do buy back clauses" ?

In Spain every contract has to have a release clause by law. It's been well reported Barcelona and Real Madrid insert buy back clauses on top of that when they sell academy players to lower La Liga clubs. The reason being if there is a hot prospect who isn't ready now for their first team, but in 2-3 years can develop to be a really good player then lower La Liga clubs can buy them for a cheaper price now to give them the game time to develop rather than foreign clubs. Because the buy back clause gives Barca and Real an advantage in the future. Sometimes those two clubs only use the clause to sign a player back to then sell on for a higher profit abroad at proper market value.

As far as I know in England this concept isn't a real thing. My guess is just stronger competition laws or just an unwritten rule. We received a percentage of the £8m fee Villa paid to sign Rogers from Middlesbrough because we had a sell on clause. He would now cost £50m at least now. Pep said they knew all along how good he was but there was no space at the time. There clearly was no buy back option.

 

[1961_vintage]

Incredible manager but for some reason this is a blind spot for Pep. Quite unfathomable how you can persist in taking the risk of sending-out unfit, broken players week after week but not take the risk of giving some of the younger talents an opportunity.

 

[Xhavenjoe]

In Spain every contract has to have a release clause by law.

We insert buyback clauses with a lot of our players but invariably do not take up the option.
The only player I know didn't have a buyback clause was Palmer.
We had one with Lavia too but for some obscure reason it didn't kick in until his second season at Southampton
Delap has a buyback clause.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

Those other clubs havent been winning title after title, trebles etc. Neither would we if we had played the kids. It really is that simple.

There's a halfway house then..... Yes there is, we did it, won title after title and brought in the youths who are now intergral to the team and squad.

The media are currently hellbent on telling CITY where we failed.... Jesus, Rogers, Palmer, Sterling, even Zinny were heralded for being wasted by City, as if City are so rich they dont know who is good and who isnt, we're failures, its why we cant ever be considered winners when we have wasted talent. We're failures.

We havent failed, we have actually brought out the greatest academy ever that is feeding the footballing pyramid... You ever hear that in the media? We are picking off the creme and they play for us as much as they can.

I hate when the media portrayal of us ends up as concern threads on Bluemoon

 

[Xhavenjoe]

We received a percentage of the £8m fee Villa paid to sign Rogers from Middlesbrough because we had a sell on clause. He would now cost £50m at least now. Pep said they knew all along how good he was but there was no space at the time. There clearly was no buy back option

We had a buy back clause of £11m on Rogers but did not take up the option

 

[.db.]

I'm confused as to why we seem to have a fair few ex academy kids doing well at other clubs.
We don't seem to be willing to give them a chance here

It was just timing.

At the time Rogers and Palmer (not Roger Palmer) were at City, we arguably had the best midfield the world has ever seen in Fernandinho, David Silva, De Bruyne, Gündoğan, Rodri, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden.

Phil Foden was well ahead of Rogers and Palmer at the time but couldn’t get a sniff in midfield unless it was in games like Newport away.

If Rogers and Palmer came through now, we probably wouldn’t sell them. They’d be ahead of McAtee, O’Reilly, Kovačić and Gündoğan, and due to illnesses this season they’d be ahead of Foden n’all.

But Foden won’t be this poor forever, it’s just temporary, and we have Oscar Bobb coming back who played as a central attacking midfielder through the youth teams just like Foden, Rogers and Palmer did.

Who’s to say that come the 2029-30 season, Foden and Bobb aren’t a better duo than Rogers and Palmer would have been?

It does sting that Palmer, especially, isn’t here because he’s a local lad who was at City for thirteen years (and despite being a United fan as a young kid, became a Blue through his time with us). But look at who was in front of him at City at the time.

 

[Beaker]

It’s a dick waving contest, “look how much money our academy generates compared to everybody else’s”. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but what did the club not see in Palmer that they did see in Doku and Nunez, both for more money than we got for Palmer? The year before what did they see in Phillips that they didn’t see in Lavia?

They’ve been tasked with generating revenue from the academy and they’ll do that at the cost of everything else. It’s a similar short termism view to what they’re doing to the fanbase with ticket prices. It’s concerning what’s happening at the club at the moment.

 

[IrishBloodEnglishHeart]

It was just timing.

At the time Rogers and Palmer (not Roger Palmer) were at City, we arguably had the best midfield the world has ever seen in Fernandinho, David Silva, De Bruyne, Gündoğan, Rodri, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden.

Phil Foden was well ahead of Rogers and Palmer at the time but couldn’t get a sniff in midfield unless it was in games like Newport away.

If Rogers and Palmer came through now, we probably wouldn’t sell them. They’d be ahead of McAtee, O’Reilly, Kovačić and Gündoğan, and due to illnesses this season they’d be ahead of Foden n’all.

But Foden won’t be this poor forever, it’s just temporary, and we have Oscar Bobb coming back who played as a central attacking midfielder through the youth teams just like Foden, Rogers and Palmer did.

Who’s to say that come the 2029-30 season, Foden and Bobb aren’t a better duo than Rogers and Palmer would have been?

It does sting that Palmer, especially, isn’t here because he’s a local lad who was at City for thirteen years (and despite being a United fan as a young kid, became a Blue through his time with us). But look at who was in front of him at City at the time.

Rogers left us last year. The same summer we signed Nunes. Not sure you have your dates correct.

 

[.db.]

Rogers left us last year. The same summer we signed Nunes. Not sure you have your dates correct.

So did Palmer.

Roger’s was at City from 2019-2023
Palmer was at City from 2010-2023

They’re both 22 now so were old enough to be in the senior squad (Rogers never actually was as he was on loan from 2021-2023) from around 2020-2023 but had too many players ahead of them in those years.

Even in 2022-23 Foden barely got a sniff in centre mid. He played just 6 games, out of the 48 he played, centrally that season. Never mind lads two years younger who’d shown much less at that stage.

 

[.db.]

It’s a dick waving contest, “look how much money our academy generates compared to everybody else’s”. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but what did the club not see in Palmer that they did see in Doku and Nunez, both for more money than we got for Palmer? The year before what did they see in Phillips that they didn’t see in Lavia?

They’ve been tasked with generating revenue from the academy and they’ll do that at the cost of everything else. It’s a similar short termism view to what they’re doing to the fanbase with ticket prices. It’s concerning what’s happening at the club at the moment.

It is very annoying. Especially when they’ve come from a club like Barça where they very much value their Academy players.

But they were well down the pecking order in their natural positions of central attacking midfield at City before 2023. At the time we’d never have known that De Bruyne would be out as much as he had over the last 18 months and would we have known how good either of them would have turned out (kind of with Palmer as I used to rave about him at City)?

Still very annoying!

 

[IrishBloodEnglishHeart]

So did Palmer.

Roger’s was at City from 2019-2023
Palmer was at City from 2010-2023

They’re both 22 now so were old enough to be in the senior squad (Rogers never actually was as he was on loan from 2021-2023) from around 2020-2023 but had too many players ahead of them in those years.

Even in 2022-23 Foden barely got a sniff in centre mid. He played just 6 games, out of the 48 he played, centrally that season. Never mind lads two years younger who’d shown much less at that stage.

Do we not plan for the future? We knew Kev was getting older/more injury prone. Bernardo has been saying he wants to leave for years. We bought Nunes when Rogers could easily had that place and been told “you’ll be on the bench to integrate with the first team”. We didn’t sell him to Villa we sold him to Boro, we didn’t even bother with Rogers. Villa obviously knew how good Rogers was because the next window they bought him. He didn’t go straight into their first team he worked at it - he could have done that with us THAT season instead of us buying Nunes.

Pep has said this weekend we always knew how good he’d be yet he didn’t bother to try and integrate him with the first team…

 

[.db.]

Do we not plan for the future? We knew Kev was getting older/more injury prone. Bernardo has been saying he wants to leave for years. We bought Nunes when Rogers could easily had that place and been told “you’ll be on the bench to integrate with the first team”. We didn’t sell him to Villa we sold him to Boro, we didn’t even bother with Rogers. Villa obviously knew how good Rogers was because the next window they bought him. He didn’t go straight into their first team he worked at it - he could have done that with us THAT season instead of us buying Nunes.

Pep has said this weekend we always knew how good he’d be yet he didn’t bother to try and integrate him with the first team…

As I said, it is very annoying!

But Foden was the future. Bobb is the future.

We - maybe stupidly - sold Rogers and Palmer when we were going for Bellingham and Rice. Nunes would probably on the tabs along the spreadsheet of midfield targets where you have to click right to see more tabs. But we got neither Bellingham nor Rice, nor Paqueta nor Brandt and ended up with Nunes and no Rogers or Palmer.

But maybe not stupidly, if Foden and Bobb end up being a fantastic attacking midfield duo in the next decade.

We’ll only know whether it was stupid not in about eight years’ time when we see whether Foden and Bobb become as good as we hope.

 

[IrishBloodEnglishHeart]

As I said, it is very annoying!

But Foden was the future. Bobb is the future.

We - maybe stupidly - sold Rogers and Palmer when we were going for Bellingham and Rice. Nunes would probably on the tabs along the spreadsheet of midfield targets where you have to click right to see more tabs. But we got neither Bellingham nor Rice, nor Paqueta nor Brandt and ended up with Nunes and no Rogers or Palmer.

But maybe not stupidly, if Foden and Bobb end up being a fantastic attacking midfield duo in the next decade.

We’ll only know whether it was stupid not in about eight years’ time when we see whether Foden and Bobb become as good as we hope.

Why could it not have been Foden, Rogers, Palmer and Bobb? Why did it only have to be two of the four?

 

[.db.]

Why could it not have been Foden, Rogers, Palmer and Bobb? Why did it only have to be two of the four?

Maybe because Txiki wanted it to be De Bruyne, Foden, Bellingham and Bobb.

I don’t even like Bellingham, I’d rather have kept the others, but Txiki obviously did.