Txiki Begiristain

[PannickAtTheDisco]

If a young player is good enough they would get in the team. Name a young player that has come through and established themselves as first team quality in the last 3 years?
Iheanacho hasn't yet done it and no other has got close.

and what was Rashford before they had to give him a go?

Sometimes you don't know till you try somebody. Same at Arsenal with Coquelin and Bellerin.

 

[BlueBlood27]

Should lose his job for not being able to identify that we have had a problem at full back and for sanctioning signing Bony/Delph alone.

Should keep it because he convinced Pep to come here.

Now he needs to get exactly who Pep wants. However I don't feel the quality is available in the market.

 

[flb]

I completely agree, puzzled as to why younger players haven’t had more opportunity.


I truly think Pep underestimated how poor we were. We’ve been inconsistent forever. I’ve said it so many times on this forum since Hughes and beyond – we’ve never managed to get to the top and stay there. Under Mancini we were excellent at home but struggled to break teams down away from home. We were good defensively but often a bit lacking in ideas up top and we got into a position where we were miles off the lead and fought back. Many call that a winning mentality, a strong mentality. It is to a degree. But a stronger mentality is to want to win every game. To not care if you’re playing West Brom or the Rags, to not care if it’s to go 3 points clear, or to close the gap to 3 points. To not let the occasion influence your performance. Either way you fight for every ball and you play the best that you can as a team and you win the game. What Chelsea have done this season, we’ve never been able to. I thought at the start of the season maybe we would finally do just that, but then we suffer a dip of form and we’re back to being inconsistent.


The fact is that whilst the management has changed, the players (particularly that core squad) have stayed the same. They’re the problem, simple as. They’re mentally weak, or lacking any true passion to win. They’ll do a lovely feature on the OS about how they can still win this and that, then they’ll turn in a dross performance full of error and lacking fight and we’ll lose a game.


What you get from younger players generally is passion to perform. With crowd support you can lift a young player to a status much above perhaps their average quality. I’ve seen it with Sane and even Sterling. A run in the team, support from the crowd and their belief rises and their confidence improves and they step up their level. Prior to Sane’s injury I thought he was looking excellent. Disciplined, quick, and full of trickery. In the cameos I’ve seen of Aleix Garcia he looks like a Pep player without doubt. Assured on the ball, aware of those around him with a natural level of comfort with the ball at his feet and a range of passing. He’ll make the odd error but so are the older players with little to no future with us.


In the summer I expect most of the older members of our squad to be allowed to go. I can’t see many staying other than Yaya perhaps for a season. I’d want to see 4-5 academy players promoted into the squad and depending on age etc put in our CL squad. Sane is evidence that the gap isn’t huge between youth football and first team if you let them step up the levels naturally. It’s all confidence. We can buy two quality established full backs but have their backup as Maffeo and another academy player whether Angelino or someone else. With Nacho, Jesus, Sterling, De Bruyne, Aguero, Silva, Nolito we don’t need too much more further forward. But I’d be trying to identify that target man. Pep’s sensible and as much as he wants us to play a style he’ll know having a player like Lewandowski is so important. We have little presence in the box, no height and no one to hold the ball up. Sometimes you need someone and you’ve got to play more direct with runners off them. Crouch, Fellaini, Ibra, Lukaku, Kane – all involved in goals over the weekend and you can add Costa over the season. Giroud for Arsenal too. When it’s all a bit slow and the probing football Silva likes to play doesn’t work, get it wide, cross it and have someone on the end of it. De Bruyne is excellent at that sort of ball but we’ve no one that can challenge aerially for the ball in open play.

If we promote several younger players the whole club will get a lift. The academy will have a true purpose, the lads that are down the age groups think "I can get into that squad in a few years if I work hard" and there will be a new feel to the squad, a new era. It's what Pep needs. Hart, Kompany, Zabba, Yaya, Silva, Aguero. The players that have helped us win things over previous seasons. But also the players that perhaps are weighing over the squad now? It's time to freshen things up.

Very good post that mate and if we keep bloating the squad with expensive imports then what is the fucking point of the academy? There are lads in the EDS now who can make up the squad, the pressure is on now for this Pep appointment to work - no ifs and buts but Txiki has one hell of a summer coming up with big decisions to make on the inclusion of youth , the academy could already be at its crossroads- it won't do the club any harm whatsoever to miss out on CL football - it's all about the revenue- meaning you can buy in players on the strength of the money it generates-it hasn't done Spurs any harm in the past few seasons- it's meant they have had to buy better and promote youth because of the lack of CL revenue and it's paying dividends for them- they have an outstanding team at the moment with exciting young hungry players, if it's all about spending massive amounts of money every transfer window then what is the fucking point?

 

[urban genie]

I would rather have a trophyless season with us just scraping top 4 by blooding the potential youth players, than persisting with some of the old guard and risking the same.

we may actually find one or two good enough to regulary step up to full first team position.

one years (relative) pain for future gain.

 

[blueju]

Very good post that mate and if we keep bloating the squad with expensive imports then what is the fucking point of the academy? There are lads in the EDS now who can make up the squad, the pressure is on now for this Pep appointment to work - no ifs and buts but Txiki has one hell of a summer coming up with big decisions to make on the inclusion of youth , the academy could already be at its crossroads- it won't do the club any harm whatsoever to miss out on CL football - it's all about the revenue- meaning you can buy in players on the strength of the money it generates-it hasn't done Spurs any harm in the past few seasons- it's meant they have had to buy better and promote youth because of the lack of CL revenue and it's paying dividends for them- they have an outstanding team at the moment with exciting young hungry players, if it's all about spending massive amounts of money every transfer window then what is the fucking point?

Agreed, this academy has been hailed as one of the best for so long, when are we actually going to see some results?
A couple of minutes is not enough to allow youngsters to get up to speed and show what they've got

 

[YaYa's Left Peg]

I think that The Project was also the reasoning that brought him here,but I do agree with you ref the overall challenge in the PL,but coupled with the excitement of also seeing The Academy and the potential in some of our wonderfully talented kids,was also a big draw.

So when are we going to see some of these wonderfully talented kids get a run out in the first team?

Pep does not seem at all interested in taking a chance on letting a couple of them have a decent run of games in the first team to show what they can do. Instead he persists with an aging right back ahead of a promising young midfielder, aging full backs instead of two hungry young players who appear to at least have the physical characteristics of Pep kind of players. It's completely baffling and not a little frustrating.

And yes, I'd rather finish outside the top 4 having blooded four or five kids, instead of finishing outside the top 4 (which is looking increasingly likely given our remaining fixtures) with a team full of senior players half of which will be gone next season, and half who don't appear to give a shit.

 

[blueparrot]

So when are we going to see some of these wonderfully talented kids get a run out in the first team?

Pep does not seem at all interested in taking a chance on letting a couple of them have a decent run of games in the first team to show what they can do. Instead he persists with an aging right back ahead of a promising young midfielder, aging full backs instead of two hungry young players who appear to at least have the physical characteristics of Pep kind of players. It's completely baffling and not a little frustrating.

And yes, I'd rather finish outside the top 4 having blooded four or five kids, instead of finishing outside the top 4 (which is looking increasingly likely given our remaining fixtures) with a team full of senior players half of which will be gone next season, and half who don't appear to give a shit.

I haven't seen much of the kids and I'm not making any judgement on them, don't want twosips or Kneville Kneville jumping on me . They know far better than me, and I'm just guessing.. But if even Pep isn't playing them, when he's played them at his other clubs then maybe this generation isn't good enough. Maybe he doesn't think they quite have what it takes to make it here, except for possibly Garcia and Maffeo.
It's the ones at U18 who were unbeaten at u16, and younger age groups that seem to be the future. To be fair to Txiki it would be this generation recruited in his time as 10 - 13 year olds. Not the generation that have made up the EDS the last couple of years.

 

[Andy Morrisons jock strap]

Im not sure why Mafeo cant get game time now maybe im missing something but he looks easily good enough right now to start

 

[oakiecokie]

So when are we going to see some of these wonderfully talented kids get a run out in the first team?

Pep does not seem at all interested in taking a chance on letting a couple of them have a decent run of games in the first team to show what they can do. Instead he persists with an aging right back ahead of a promising young midfielder, aging full backs instead of two hungry young players who appear to at least have the physical characteristics of Pep kind of players. It's completely baffling and not a little frustrating.

And yes, I'd rather finish outside the top 4 having blooded four or five kids, instead of finishing outside the top 4 (which is looking increasingly likely given our remaining fixtures) with a team full of senior players half of which will be gone next season, and half who don't appear to give a shit.

Why are people so impatient ??

 

[YaYa's Left Peg]

Why are people so impatient ??

Perhaps. But if Spurs, Everton, Liverpool and even the rags can do it, I'm not sure why we can't given that I keep hearing that our youngsters are tearing it up at all levels.

I also think fans (not all admittedly) would be more accepting of performances that we have all witnessed lately. As an example, when the youngsters got whacked by Chelsea in the cup, I hated the result but really enjoyed the passion that the lads showed. Obviously I'm not advocating we make those sort of wholesale changes, but one or two shouldn't affect the team too much in terms of results but potentially could lead to great benefits in the future.