The youth players that played today

[Bluearmy]

I thought both Garcia's and Tosin were better than Kelechi on the day. The first half was competitive.

I believe one or two of them could easily fit into a strong first eleven and not let us down.

To be fair to the kids, they were all 18/19 unless I'm mistaken. That's very young to be playing regular premier league football. Even the much heralded rags class of didn't play regular until they were 20/21 really. Give them 18 months 2 years and we should see some real improvement as long as there managed correctly. Not all of them are ready like Kelechi seems to be. But that's fine, that's the norm.
Hopefully in Pep we make the correct decisions with them and manage them properly and see the benefits of this over the next 2 or 3 years. Peps successor could be a very lucky guy walking into a job with that batch at 21/22 years old a few years down the line

 

[mad zab]

To be fair to the kids, they were all 18/19 unless I'm mistaken. That's very young to be playing regular premier league football. Even the much heralded rags class of didn't play regular until they were 20/21 really. Give them 18 months 2 years and we should see some real improvement as long as there managed correctly. Not all of them are ready like Kelechi seems to be. But that's fine, that's the norm.
Hopefully in Pep we make the correct decision and manage them properly and see the benefits of this over the next 2 or 3 years. Peps successor could be a very lucky guy walking into a job with that batch at 21/22 years old a few years down the line

I agree with you. What we need to do is show them there is a path to the first team if they work hard enough. Up to now we haven't done this. IMO Marcos Lopes and Jason Denyaer would have been good enough for our squad. For some reason we weren't willing to do this. We loaned Jason out and sold Marcos. We need to begin to put some of our youngsters in the squad on a more regular basis instead of over paid squad fillers from elsewhere.

 

[Bluearmy]

I agree with you. What we need to do is show them there is a path to the first team if they work hard enough. Up to now we haven't done this. IMO Marcos Lopes and Jason Denyaer would have been good enough for our squad. For some reason we weren't willing to do this. We loaned Jason out and sold Marcos. We need to begin to put some of our youngsters in the squad on a more regular basis instead of over paid squad fillers from elsewhere.

Lopes was an interesting one. Obviously talented and rated by Pellers and Vieira. However only 1 year left on his contract and wouldn't sign an extension I don't believe. Wanted playing time which was tuff to guarantee so when 9 mil + was put on the table, was a business decision to sell. Looks to be the correct decision from what he's done since.

As for Denayer, I think he'll be in the squad next year. Shown he can play right back along with centre half in Turkey. Signed an extended contract so no issues similar to Lopes and potentially losing him for peanuts. In hindsight should of been kept looking at the injuries we've experienced. But that was difficult to predict and with Kompany, Mangala, otamendi and MDM in situ, understandable we loaned him out.

 

[Dax777]

Manu Garcia was the pick of the bunch. Nacho was OK, Barker seems to have something. At least the commentators thought so. The rest are not ready yet, if we went off this 1 game.