Carragher's kid off to Everton? | Page 3 | Vital Football

Carragher's kid off to Everton?

Degsy1 said:
Absolutely correct - no matter how good the academy is it pretty pointless ifcthere is no pathway to the first team !
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???
There is (or rather, was) a path. Last season, Gelhardt made 19 appearances after walking up it. Weir wasn't as good as Gelhardt, but also made the bench. When Devine left us, he was only 15 !

Last season, we were in the Championship, so the standard expected was obviously higher. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
 
Hard to bring lads into the first team when, as a club your moving up and down the leagues like we have been over the last 10 years. Your not 100% sure how senior pro's are going to be in the next level up so its very hard to say how a graduate would find it.

Much easier to maintain that pathway to the first team when your consistent in your league status. Fingers crossed the stability will come now which in turn should allow us to keep a stream coming through.

In regards to the system in general, its no different to anything else. If Man Utd or Everton believe a kid in our youth system will benefit them in the long run, they will try to take him just like they would with any senior pro. No doubt we would do / have done the same thing to clubs further down than us. Just because we have lost 4/5 potentially talented players doesn't mean we should abandon the system in my eyes. We don't have the fan base to generate enough income in the higher divisions. Therefore should be move away from the academy and go CAT 4 model e.g. Brentford then the pressure to get our player recruitment trading strategy right would be huge.

If the club can keep up the job work and continue to develop players like they have then like someone mentioned above, the kids who find themselves released from bigger clubs will see Wigan as a attractive option but also we have the ability to create our own assets. Should we be in a position where could sell one or two in the comings years for £10 million+, similar to what Birmingham managed to do with Jude Bellingham then that could keep our club running for years to come.
 
walgarthjohn said:
We did have some talented young lads. but if these awful times had Not happened. How many would Cook have played. only played young joe. Under pressure from fans. Merrie. Perry would never have got a sniff.
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It's debatable if Merrie and Perry are good enough for L1 this season when we had no better options, so of course they wouldn't have have ever got a sniff at Championship level last season when we had Morsy and Williams.

I agree Cook was too slow to use Geldhardt but the rest of the young lads weren't ready for that level and certainly no better than the players we had at the time. Given more time i'm sure the academy players who were good enough would eventually break through, but it's no use putting them in way before they are ready if you can avoid it as you may just hamper their development.
 
walgarthjohn said:
Lang always looked ok but Cook didn’t fancy him
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Sorry to be a pain in the arse John, but that view needs to be put in context.

Cook didn't fancy him in the Championship, because it's a (significant?) step up in quality.

At the time, when we were in League 1 with Cook, Lang was 3 years younger, 3 years less experienced, 3 years less everything....... in fact, it's 4 years if we go to the start of the last season we were in League 1.

So, Cooky sent him out on loan ... a few times. He didn't release him, He didn't cancel his contract. He presumably saw something worthwhile holding onto, and wanted the lad to get experience. He did OK on those spells, maybe a little better than OK, but he wasn't breaking any pots.

Regardless, that experience has now helped us stay up this season ... in league 1 ... with Callum aged 22.

The player's age and which league we're playing in are key differentiators when making a comparison.
 
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walgarthjohn said:
Like I keep saying to you. We don’t see things the same way.
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It's not a case of seeing things the same way or differently John ... surely (in this instance), it's simply a case of seeing things reasonably, with context.

To simply suggest that Cook "didn't fancy" Lang is demonstrably incorrect. If you'd have said that he didn't fancy him in the Championship, then fair enough. Or, he didn't fancy him enough to give him a place in a Championship squad, then again, no problem.

However, he obviously fancied him enough to give him at least two pro contracts.
 
John, here's his record. There's no way that justifies being on the bench in the championship ahead of Garner, Gelhardt, Jacobs, or Pilkington last season but one.

I've no problem having a different opinion re a player ... my issue was with you saying that Cook didn't "fancy him"

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walgarthjohn said:
Let’s just face it your a out and out Paul Cook fan and I was never. Let’s just leave it at that. No point. N
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Whether I was a Cook fan (though yes, I was) has nowt to do with it.

As I said, if it's just your opinion vs mine, I have no problem disagreeing and leaving it at that.

It's just that sometimes, opinions are based on fact ...... like there being a pathway to the the 1st XI squad, and Cook actually fancying Lang enough to give him two contracts, whilst his record showed that he was still learning, still developing, and not quite good enough (at that age, at that stage of his development) to justify a place in the 1st XI Championship squad.

Me being a Cook fan has nowt to do with any of that. It just shows that Cook fancied Lang .... and had created a path (maybe more than one) for the young lads to play 1st XI football.

:shrug:
 
walgarthjohn said:
Lang always looked ok but Cook didn’t fancy him
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Lang looked to have potential for sure but he hadn't done anything above L2 and we had a pretty decent squad in the Championship at the time, so it made sense he was out on loan in L1 to continue his development. Clubs did want to sign Lang but we said we wanted to keep him for the future. Unfortunately he got a bad injury but if Lang would've stayed fit and excelled in L1 he'd have likely got his chance with us by being recalled in January or the following season.

So i don't think we can go as far as saying Cook didn't fancy him, it was more a case of Lang was out getting the games to get him ready for the future.

There is a lot to be critical of Cook for, but with the exception of Geldhardt we can't blame him for not using the other academy players as they just weren't ready for Championship football at that point. That's not to say that if he stayed he would've ever used them - but we can only judge him on what he did.
 
king_dezeeuw06 said:
Lang looked to have potential for sure but he hadn't done anything above L2 and we had a pretty decent squad in the Championship at the time, so it made sense he was out on loan in L1 to continue his development. Clubs did want to sign Lang but we said we wanted to keep him for the future. Unfortunately he got a bad injury but if Lang would've stayed fit and excelled in L1 he'd have likely got his chance with us by being recalled in January or the following season.

So i don't think we can go as far as saying Cook didn't fancy him, it was more a case of Lang was out getting the games to get him ready for the future.

There is a lot to be critical of Cook for, but with the exception of Geldhardt we can't blame him for not using the other academy players as they just weren't ready for Championship football at that point. That's not to say that if he stayed he would've ever used them - but we can only judge him on what he did.
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Gelhardt is a good example of how a wrong move can fuck you over. Was playing senior football and in England squads with us. Now with his next birthday being his twentieth he's playing u23s football and has thus far scored one senior goal in his career. Big 12 months ahead.
 
Ooohaaahdonniepage said:
Gelhardt is a good example of how a wrong move can fuck you over. Was playing senior football and in England squads with us. Now with his next birthday being his twentieth he's playing u23s football and has thus far scored one senior goal in his career. Big 12 months ahead.
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If i was Leeds i'd have sent him out on loan to us to guarantee he got game time.
 
Ooohaaahdonniepage said:
Gelhardt is a good example of how a wrong move can fuck you over. Was playing senior football and in England squads with us. Now with his next birthday being his twentieth he's playing u23s football and has thus far scored one senior goal in his career. Big 12 months ahead.
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I don't think that it's necessarily a wrong move - everything that I have read coming out of Leeds has been raving about how good he is & how he's destined for the top
Leeds have also slimmed him down considerably whereas (certainly from things other players have said) Latics have concentrated for a while on bulking players up.

You may ultimately be right & he never makes it at Leeds but people were criticising City & Foden for not sending/demanding he go out on loan & now look at him
I still think it's early days to make that judgement call
 
Mighty Bongsmon said:
I don't think that it's necessarily a wrong move - everything that I have read coming out of Leeds has been raving about how good he is & how he's destined for the top
Leeds have also slimmed him down considerably whereas (certainly from things other players have said) Latics have concentrated for a while on bulking players up.

You may ultimately be right & he never makes it at Leeds but people were criticising City & Foden for not sending/demanding he go out on loan & now look at him
I still think it's early days to make that judgement call
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Foden is a very special player who admire a lot.
 
Mighty Bongsmon said:
I don't think that it's necessarily a wrong move - everything that I have read coming out of Leeds has been raving about how good he is & how he's destined for the top
Leeds have also slimmed him down considerably whereas (certainly from things other players have said) Latics have concentrated for a while on bulking players up.

You may ultimately be right & he never makes it at Leeds but people were criticising City & Foden for not sending/demanding he go out on loan & now look at him
I still think it's early days to make that judgement call
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Foden been playing in City side since 17 and though he was used sparingly he was actually used. Joe needs to get first team games under his belt now not u23 games to develop. Thus far it was the wrong move but as I said big 12 months ahead.
 
Dont think Gelhardt is in a bad place to be honest. For every moment of quality he showed last year, he also showed areas in his game that needed developing. He would fade out of games similar to McManaman in my eyes. He‘s been on the bench a number of times this year and even though he's not been on the pitch yet, he is training day in day out with the likes of Klich, Raphinha and Hernandez as well as the other quality players at Leeds. In addition to be coached by Bielsa who is widely considered to be one of the best coaches in world football.

The loan system is all well and good but the loans in themsleves have to thought out properly. Just sending them somewhere so they can play against men isn’t always best for a players development.
 
C_McNamara said:
Dont think Gelhardt is in a bad place to be honest. For every moment of quality he showed last year, he also showed areas in his game that needed developing. He would fade out of games similar to McManaman in my eyes. He‘s been on the bench a number of times this year and even though he's not been on the pitch yet, he is training day in day out with the likes of Klich, Raphinha and Hernandez as well as the other quality players at Leeds. In addition to be coached by Bielsa who is widely considered to be one of the best coaches in world football.

The loan system is all well and good but the loans in themsleves have to thought out properly. Just sending them somewhere so they can play against men isn’t always best for a players development.
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I’m sure the opportunity to work with Bielsa was one of the main reasons he went there
 
C_McNamara said:
Probably mate, what Bielsa has done with some of the players there is out of this world.
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If you ain't playing regular first team football by the age of 20 I would say it's time to move on. You get left behind by peers as we have seen in development of our young players this season.
 
It's a mixed bag for Geldhardt, he will be learning by working with a superior coach and training with a higher quality of players - but the flip side is u23 games are no substitute for competitive senior games.

I don't think it was a bad move for him to go to Leeds yet, but he really needs to be getting regular competitive football on loan next season - if he doesn't get that the move may start to look like a bad one. I believe he is the top scorer in the u23 league so i'm certain there will be a queue of Champ clubs looking to take him on loan.
 
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