Carstairs said:Big Swifty said:I was really excited seeing the new developments on TV yesterday. I open my copy of TheTimes today (I only buy it as I'm addicted to the crossword) and see a big article by one James Ducker, "Northern Football Correspondent", who rarely misses a chance to slag City off and whom I have long suspected of being a rag.
There's hardly a good word about the new set-up, only a lot of stuff about how few academy players we have produced, whilst Utd have already this season blooded Blackett & McSomebody, and the new campus will only be any good if it produces first-team players, and that will not be for many years yet.
I finished the article feeling pretty deflated, and what with the other lot scraping a win somehow (again), Kun out for ages and now our new set-up is miles off producing anything yet, I feel like reaching for the single malt already.
Did anyone else read this stuff, or can any tecnnogeek copy a bit out? Or am I out of touch with reality? I just wonder what Ducker would have written had it been his beloved Reds who have done all this.
I shall think up a limerick: There was a reporter called Ducker
A miserable biased old.... (can't think of a rhyme for Ducker)
This is the Ducker article, it is extraordinarily bitter!
It is, first and foremost, a stunning development: vast in its scale, meticulous in its attention to detail and awe-inspiring in its ambition. Long after Sheikh Mansour has moved on to other things, the City Football Academy will stand as a monument to the Abu Dhabi billionaire’s transformation of Manchester City and this previously neglected enclave of the city’s east side.
The new £200 million training complex, which formally opened yesterday a stone’s throw, or rather, a 190-metre walk over an interconnecting bridge from the Etihad Stadium, will serve everything from the first team to the under-6s in addition to almost all the club’s off-field operations.
Take a walking tour around this sprawling, 80-acre site and it is hard to believe that this is the same club Joe Royle, the former City manager, once joked would have a bulging trophy cabinet if only cups were dished out for “cock-ups”. From the 7,000-capacity Academy Stadium to the other 15½ pitches and an academy building that has space to house tired, taxi-servicing parents overnight, to the hydrotherapy pools, multiple gyms and 32 en-suite bedrooms that comprise the first team’s headquarters, it is easy to see how the complex went through 19 different design versions after exhaustive analysis of 70 sporting facilities in nine countries across four continents. Patrick Vieira, the manager of City’s under-21 team, calls it a “no excuses” environment but that is where the more pressing questions start.
Amid myriad statistics, there is one figure that underlines the size of the challenge facing the Barclays Premier League champions as they attempt to develop a conveyor belt of young talent. Since Mansour’s takeover in September 2008, only one academy graduate who had not already won promotion to the first team — Dedryck Boyata — has made more than one top-flight start for City. No English academy graduate who was not already established has achieved that in six years and the most recent member of the Elite Development Squad (EDS) to force his way into Manuel Pellegrini’s plans was José Ángel Pozo, a Spaniard signed from Real Madrid for £1.2 million in 2012. In contrast, eight of the players who featured in Barcelona’s Champions League final triumph over Manchester United in 2011 were products of the Catalan club’s famed La Masia academy, with another two among the unused substitutes.
Survey the “roll of honour” of City first-team graduates that lines one corridor of the academy building and, beyond the omission of Ched Evans, the convicted rapist and former Wales striker who made 26 appearances for the club between 2007 and 2009, what resonates is how stiff a task the club face just trying to deliver one homespun talent who can consistently challenge for a place in Pellegrini’s squad.
When the manager needed a left- footed centre half in the summer, did he turn to Karim Rekik, the promising 20-year-old Holland defender at present in the middle of his second season on loan at PSV Eindhoven? No, City went out and spent £40 million (not £32 million as was originally quoted) on Eliaquim Mangala, a 23-year-old France centre back who may well develop into a world-beater in time but who has endured a tough introduction to English football.
Was it wrong that City wanted to buy Mangala? Of course not, but at what cost does his arrival come to Rekik’s chances of progress at the club? City will dislike the comparison with Manchester United but Louis van Gaal’s promotion of Paddy McNair and Tyler Blackett, 19 and 20-year-old academy graduates respectively, to the first team during his first few months in charge at Old Trafford, albeit in the face of a dreadful injury crisis, does the champions few favours.
And Vieira admits it could be six more years before the academy delivers a homegrown first-team player.
“It could be five years, it can be six, it can be four,” Viera said. “We have a clear idea how we want to develop these young players. We have to be patient, work hard and see who will be the next elite player. The good thing is we have a manager who takes in every day players from the EDS training with the first team. At the moment the gap is massive between under-21 level and first team and we need to bridge that gap.”
Micah Richards was the most recent academy graduate to establish himself as a first-team regular during the post- Abu Dhabi revolution but the defender, on loan at Fiorentina as his City career draws to an end, identified a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what the club is trying to achieve.
Will Pellegrini and his future successors be prepared to gamble on youth if they are stalked by a persistent fear for their jobs?
“I feel a little bit sorry for the youngsters at City because they have got some really good ones,” Richards said last month. “They are not going to get a chance because whoever is in the managerial role is under pressure to get results.”
Pablo Zabaleta, the Argentinian who dislodged Richards as City’s first-choice right back, is more optimistic and insisted that, for emerging academy talents, the new facility will “100 per cent” help to ease that path to the first team, despite adding the caveat that “we need to be realistic and say that it’s difficult for them”.
How difficult remains to be seen.
Big Swifty said:I was really excited seeing the new developments on TV yesterday. I open my copy of TheTimes today (I only buy it as I'm addicted to the crossword) and see a big article by one James Ducker, "Northern Football Correspondent", who rarely misses a chance to slag City off and whom I have long suspected of being a rag.
There's hardly a good word about the new set-up, only a lot of stuff about how few academy players we have produced, whilst Utd have already this season blooded Blackett & McSomebody, and the new campus will only be any good if it produces first-team players, and that will not be for many years yet.
I finished the article feeling pretty deflated, and what with the other lot scraping a win somehow (again), Kun out for ages and now our new set-up is miles off producing anything yet, I feel like reaching for the single malt already.
Did anyone else read this stuff, or can any tecnnogeek copy a bit out? Or am I out of touch with reality? I just wonder what Ducker would have written had it been his beloved Reds who have done all this.
I shall think up a limerick: There was a reporter called Ducker
A miserable biased old.... (can't think of a rhyme for Ducker)
Carstairs said:Big Swifty said:I was really excited seeing the new developments on TV yesterday. I open my copy of TheTimes today (I only buy it as I'm addicted to the crossword) and see a big article by one James Ducker, "Northern Football Correspondent", who rarely misses a chance to slag City off and whom I have long suspected of being a rag.
There's hardly a good word about the new set-up, only a lot of stuff about how few academy players we have produced, whilst Utd have already this season blooded Blackett & McSomebody, and the new campus will only be any good if it produces first-team players, and that will not be for many years yet.
I finished the article feeling pretty deflated, and what with the other lot scraping a win somehow (again), Kun out for ages and now our new set-up is miles off producing anything yet, I feel like reaching for the single malt already.
Did anyone else read this stuff, or can any tecnnogeek copy a bit out? Or am I out of touch with reality? I just wonder what Ducker would have written had it been his beloved Reds who have done all this.
I shall think up a limerick: There was a reporter called Ducker
A miserable biased old.... (can't think of a rhyme for Ducker)
This is the Ducker article, it is extraordinarily bitter!
It is, first and foremost, a stunning development: vast in its scale, meticulous in its attention to detail and awe-inspiring in its ambition. Long after Sheikh Mansour has moved on to other things, the City Football Academy will stand as a monument to the Abu Dhabi billionaire’s transformation of Manchester City and this previously neglected enclave of the city’s east side.
Long after Sheikh Mansour has moved on to other things, the City Football Academy will stand as a monument to the Abu Dhabi billionaire’s transformation of Manchester City and this previously neglected enclave of the city’s east side
He has to write a balanced article. There are only positives to the academy, but there are question marks. The building creates opportunity, but it leaves questions unanswered.stony said:Ducker is just another embittered cockroach.
His gratuitous (in the context of this article) reference to Ched Evans' rape conviction tells you all you need to know about his mindset when he wrote that article. If he wants to draw comparisons, Southampton would have been much more analogous than united. City are looking to produce truly top talent, something united haven't done for over two decades. His slightly modified "when the Sheikh gets bored" reference in his first paragraph also belies his wishful thinking, although he seems to at least finally acknowledge that we're not going away. This acceptance wasn't always reflected in Ducker's writing output, it should be said.Carstairs said:Big Swifty said:I was really excited seeing the new developments on TV yesterday. I open my copy of TheTimes today (I only buy it as I'm addicted to the crossword) and see a big article by one James Ducker, "Northern Football Correspondent", who rarely misses a chance to slag City off and whom I have long suspected of being a rag.
There's hardly a good word about the new set-up, only a lot of stuff about how few academy players we have produced, whilst Utd have already this season blooded Blackett & McSomebody, and the new campus will only be any good if it produces first-team players, and that will not be for many years yet.
I finished the article feeling pretty deflated, and what with the other lot scraping a win somehow (again), Kun out for ages and now our new set-up is miles off producing anything yet, I feel like reaching for the single malt already.
Did anyone else read this stuff, or can any tecnnogeek copy a bit out? Or am I out of touch with reality? I just wonder what Ducker would have written had it been his beloved Reds who have done all this.
I shall think up a limerick: There was a reporter called Ducker
A miserable biased old.... (can't think of a rhyme for Ducker)
This is the Ducker article, it is extraordinarily bitter!
It is, first and foremost, a stunning development: vast in its scale, meticulous in its attention to detail and awe-inspiring in its ambition. Long after Sheikh Mansour has moved on to other things, the City Football Academy will stand as a monument to the Abu Dhabi billionaire’s transformation of Manchester City and this previously neglected enclave of the city’s east side.
The new £200 million training complex, which formally opened yesterday a stone’s throw, or rather, a 190-metre walk over an interconnecting bridge from the Etihad Stadium, will serve everything from the first team to the under-6s in addition to almost all the club’s off-field operations.
Take a walking tour around this sprawling, 80-acre site and it is hard to believe that this is the same club Joe Royle, the former City manager, once joked would have a bulging trophy cabinet if only cups were dished out for “cock-ups”. From the 7,000-capacity Academy Stadium to the other 15½ pitches and an academy building that has space to house tired, taxi-servicing parents overnight, to the hydrotherapy pools, multiple gyms and 32 en-suite bedrooms that comprise the first team’s headquarters, it is easy to see how the complex went through 19 different design versions after exhaustive analysis of 70 sporting facilities in nine countries across four continents. Patrick Vieira, the manager of City’s under-21 team, calls it a “no excuses” environment but that is where the more pressing questions start.
Amid myriad statistics, there is one figure that underlines the size of the challenge facing the Barclays Premier League champions as they attempt to develop a conveyor belt of young talent. Since Mansour’s takeover in September 2008, only one academy graduate who had not already won promotion to the first team — Dedryck Boyata — has made more than one top-flight start for City. No English academy graduate who was not already established has achieved that in six years and the most recent member of the Elite Development Squad (EDS) to force his way into Manuel Pellegrini’s plans was José Ángel Pozo, a Spaniard signed from Real Madrid for £1.2 million in 2012. In contrast, eight of the players who featured in Barcelona’s Champions League final triumph over Manchester United in 2011 were products of the Catalan club’s famed La Masia academy, with another two among the unused substitutes.
Survey the “roll of honour” of City first-team graduates that lines one corridor of the academy building and, beyond the omission of Ched Evans, the convicted rapist and former Wales striker who made 26 appearances for the club between 2007 and 2009, what resonates is how stiff a task the club face just trying to deliver one homespun talent who can consistently challenge for a place in Pellegrini’s squad.
When the manager needed a left- footed centre half in the summer, did he turn to Karim Rekik, the promising 20-year-old Holland defender at present in the middle of his second season on loan at PSV Eindhoven? No, City went out and spent £40 million (not £32 million as was originally quoted) on Eliaquim Mangala, a 23-year-old France centre back who may well develop into a world-beater in time but who has endured a tough introduction to English football.
Was it wrong that City wanted to buy Mangala? Of course not, but at what cost does his arrival come to Rekik’s chances of progress at the club? City will dislike the comparison with Manchester United but Louis van Gaal’s promotion of Paddy McNair and Tyler Blackett, 19 and 20-year-old academy graduates respectively, to the first team during his first few months in charge at Old Trafford, albeit in the face of a dreadful injury crisis, does the champions few favours.
And Vieira admits it could be six more years before the academy delivers a homegrown first-team player.
“It could be five years, it can be six, it can be four,” Viera said. “We have a clear idea how we want to develop these young players. We have to be patient, work hard and see who will be the next elite player. The good thing is we have a manager who takes in every day players from the EDS training with the first team. At the moment the gap is massive between under-21 level and first team and we need to bridge that gap.”
Micah Richards was the most recent academy graduate to establish himself as a first-team regular during the post- Abu Dhabi revolution but the defender, on loan at Fiorentina as his City career draws to an end, identified a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what the club is trying to achieve.
Will Pellegrini and his future successors be prepared to gamble on youth if they are stalked by a persistent fear for their jobs?
“I feel a little bit sorry for the youngsters at City because they have got some really good ones,” Richards said last month. “They are not going to get a chance because whoever is in the managerial role is under pressure to get results.”
Pablo Zabaleta, the Argentinian who dislodged Richards as City’s first-choice right back, is more optimistic and insisted that, for emerging academy talents, the new facility will “100 per cent” help to ease that path to the first team, despite adding the caveat that “we need to be realistic and say that it’s difficult for them”.
How difficult remains to be seen.