Hard to guess beyond Pep as things may change with another manager but I can't see anyone but Foden and/or Diaz make it here, and unfortunately I'm not even sure one of them will "make it" (start around 25% of our games in a season). I think Muric can be good enough but probably won't settle for second choice and I have very high hopes for Nmecha but I doubt he'll ever get a fair chance to show it here. Neither Eric Garcia nor Bolton will get enough chances to show what they can do. Bolton might get his chance on Sunday but if he's not taking it (meaning being very very good) he won't ever get another chance.
A wild card to make it would be Manu Garcia. Unfortunately for him we have many top class CM's including Foden but I'm sure he'll have a great career elsewhere eventually.
I've been optimistic about our kids path into our first team for years and Khaldoon have said all the right things and that they want half the team to be from our Academy and stuff like that. Doubt that's ever gonna happen and I'd be very happy if we just had 20%, but after these last years I'm starting to give up on kids ever being given fair chances here. Maybe things will change if we win the Champions League and therefor having won everything. Maybe then we will take more "risks" when building our squad and allowing our wonderkids to get more than just 100 Premier League minutes every season.
Mate, you seem to be quite disappointed with our youth development, and I fully understand your pessimistic stance,
but don't you see a change after signing some of the best European prospects?
I think the club tries hard to develop youth for City's own squad instead of just doing it for financial reasons to loan and sell on.
But: we simply need worldclass for our squad, nothing less.
We cannot give any kid a 'chance' in the first team to see if they are good enough.
We also know young kids need to play, but there's a problem:
we have 17 foreign spots, 4 homegrown non-locals and
0 locally-trained/academy players (we could have 4).
IF we want to develop worldclass local players, they have to play for City for 36 months, non continuous, aged 15-21.
If we sign young kids at let's say 17, they could play EDS for 2 years,
go on loan somewhere or within CFG Group to get tested and play regularly for 1 year
and come back to finish these 36 months for City.
That also needs the player to stick to that plan and be patient. And he has to show his brilliance.
Only then he would join the squad as a locally-trained homegrown player.
But nowadays some young players want to play CL at 18/19!
That means we would have to get 15 year old kids to City to stick to the 36 months requested as explained above.
We also just could forget about the local homegrown squad rule and just try to develop young players instead of signing them for big money.
I don't know if City cares about local homegrowns or not, somebody itk?
But we know developing youth/kids to worldclass is nearly unpredictable for the human factor per se. They are kids more or less!
But looking at the young lads we have seen on the US tour I must say I have been impressed by most of them and it tells me City is on a much better way compared to the years before Pep arrived. Have some more patience.
I think City is on a good track now and could attract even more young kids if we can show that the system is working well.
