Everything points to us spending the next few years pushing the youths; the appointment of Malpas (with his Scot U-21 experience), all those youths getting pro-contracts, and even the fact we've been hearing about a 3-year plan to get promoted, instead of just splashing out for promotion.
I'm up for that, as long as we can continue to produce young players of a decent quality. I have no idea about the standards of our younger youth team players. Of course it will require a fair bit of patience. We'd definitely need to give Malpas a proper season to see if he's up to the job of bringing these players through.
General sporting consensus would probably agree that we'd still need a few crucial vertebrae of experienced players, if not an entire backbone. The sort of player which can guarantee a performance and just as importantly, lead on the pitch when things aren't going too well. There can be a huge range of maturity amongst young players (and young people in general), both mentally and physically. There's no point having the best young player in the world if you can't make him play to his potential when it matters.
Generally I'm well for the youth route. It makes sense financially as well. But only if the players are good enough. There's no point of getting stuck in the "They're good because we raised them" mentality. We'll end up stuck in a maddening broken dreams of improvement loop.
I've never thought of it like that, good point.
It's risky, but something I'd definitely like to see... A bit like Crewe in a way, they've produced some very good youngsters in recent years, made a lot of money out of it too. Although they reinvested absolutely none of it and are now struggling, so maybe a lesson to be learnt there.
