Harris comments on bringing through the youth | Vital Football

Harris comments on bringing through the youth

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Vital Reserves Team
At last someone has recognised the need to do this and put some time and hopefully effort into it. Kent is a big county, there must be good players either missed gone to London clubs or just overlooked.

I appreciate your dacks, tuckers etc etc but we should be able to produce more. It's the way to go produce home grown players and sell them on.
 
Cookiejar said:
At last someone has recognised the need to do this and put some time and hopefully effort into it. Kent is a big county, there must be good players either missed gone to London clubs or just overlooked.

I appreciate your dacks, tuckers etc etc but we should be able to produce more. It's the way to go produce home grown players and sell them on.
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It's a brilliant idea but requires money to implement. It'll pay for itself once it develops the first big money transfer but requires that initial investment and sustained investment until then.

I love all the talk of this long term project/plan.

Can scally resource the implementation of the plan?
 
Maybe I am being cynical but I always find that "will look to promote the youth" is buzzword for "we'd don't have the resources to buy fully experienced established players"

The problem is that the top London clubs have the resources to encrouch on what some people might consider our local catchment area and who'd turn down a top club to play for Gillingham youths?
 
To be fair it’s something that’s been missing for a while… there must be plenty of youngsters out there worth a chance … and then sell them on for some money..

I much rather see a youngster getting a chance in the first team than another loan player.
 
Baghdad_Rob said:
Maybe I am being cynical but I always find that "will look to promote the youth" is buzzword for "we'd don't have the resources to buy fully experienced established players"

The problem is that the top London clubs have the resources to encrouch on what some people might consider our local catchment area and who'd turn down a top club to play for Gillingham youths?
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We've always looked to promote youth and develop young players but unfortunately, they are usually young players from other clubs.
If you loan in a player who is exceptional, then that's one thing, but quite often, they are not much better than our own youngsters.
Example being Cumming.
Much better than our own keeper.
 
When did we ever seriously promote youth. I know we did late sixties but since then?

Late sixties in the under 18 local league (when youngsters were also allowed to play for schools and local clubs) there were a few gills youngsters but mainly those training with west ham and charlton (e.g hales).

we keep hearing of 'train youngsters' but its mainly rhetoric. Generally we dont even bother to take it seriously.
 
Bringing through youth requires a long term commitment over many years, not a succession of managers who are judged only on short term results. In the last couple of years SE made Jack Tucker a first team player because he was obviously good enough, but had no interest at all in bring through the handful of other kids who might or might not be good enough.

There are a small number of clubs who do bring through significant numbers of their own kids, and they tend to have both a long term cultural commitment and a lack of funds for more experience. This season Wimbledon have played (I think) eight products of their own youth system in their first team, plus a bunch more in the Football Pizza Cup thing. They've been building up to that for years though.
 
You can only promote youth if they're good enough. The only ones who have been a success here have been good enough to warrant a place in the first team.
 
HerrLjunga said:
I never liked the way BFSE used to describe our youth players as "babies" and being a "million miles" from ready for the first team. Not exactly the confidence boost needed to get the best out of them.
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In fairness there is a massive gap between youth football and League 1 football. Look at the 'kids' that have come from Prem youth teams to us on loan and just not cut it or had what it takes, and they're technically better than our own youth I'd imagine, it takes alot more than that to be successful and not many make it.
 
Captainreblue said:
In fairness there is a massive gap between youth football and League 1 football. Look at the 'kids' that have come from Prem youth teams to us on loan and just not cut it or had what it takes, and they're technically better than our own youth I'd imagine, it takes alot more than that to be successful and not many make it.
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I'm not denying that, but the language used by Evans would, I imagine, be pretty demoralising for a young kid.
 
Baghdad_Rob said:
Maybe I am being cynical but I always find that "will look to promote the youth" is buzzword for "we'd don't have the resources to buy fully experienced established players"

The problem is that the top London clubs have the resources to encrouch on what some people might consider our local catchment area and who'd turn down a top club to play for Gillingham youths?
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It's even worse than that though. There used to be several GFC summer football camps for kids near where I live in the Ashford/Folkestone area - there was one at the Marsh Academy in New Romney and another one in Hawkinge. I would add that they were "pay for" ones too and not that cheap really and were always popular, so I'm sure they paid for themselves. Last summer I looked for similar such GFC summer camps to send my son too and there were none. Sadly, as I needed somewhere to send my son and he wanted to do some football in his close season from football for his club and school, I had to send him to a Charlton one at Norton Knatchbull in Ashford. There were several other ones in other locations around here. The Knatch one was certainly full and cost about £40-£50 a kid, so good money for Charlton and a chance to spot talent across the county. My son played at Ashford United the other day at Homelands and there were Charlton FC academy flags everywhere too, so there is clearly a link there too and I am sure Charlton would get first look at any players coming through Ashford United and probably Ashford Borough (whether it be the first team there or various youth age groups - the U10s certainly thrashed my son's team and had some decent looking players!)

Personally, I'm not a fan of teams operating outside of their catchment area and think Charlton should have a think about how they are affected by bigger teams around them. However, whilst Charlton clearly have more funds than us, I doubt they are made of money and their ability to set-up such summer camps is more about being organised and having a development plan and strategy than money as, as I say, I am sure they are self-funding.

Hopefully, this is the sort of thing Harris will be working on with Scally going forward. One question I do ask (and it is one I am genuinely interested in). What actually is the GFC School? Is it funded by the club? Does it make the club money? Is the aim to bring youth players through and presumably educating them at the same time? (It's clearly a project that Scally is well behind.) I wonder whether time, money and focus would be better spent on projects around the county developing local talent throughout Kent, running football camps and teaming up with Kent non-league teams.
 
The top clubs around the world take on thousands of youngsters but a tiny percentage ever play for their first teams.

So there must be lots of youngsters who are let go after benefitting from all that high level coaching. Must be some of them are good enough to play in L1 (or L2 next year!).

Where do they all go to?
 
HerrLjunga said:
I'm not denying that, but the language used by Evans would, I imagine, be pretty demoralising for a young kid.
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Again in fairness I don't think SE was wrong in his opinion. But is it worse being honest or giving them false hope. SE was very complimentary about Joe Walsh and has said a couple of our youngsters have a bright future, they're just nowhere near ready for the here and now.
 
Captainreblue said:
Again in fairness I don't think SE was wrong in his opinion. But is it worse being honest or giving them false hope. SE was very complimentary about Joe Walsh and has said a couple of our youngsters have a bright future, they're just nowhere near ready for the here and now.
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Yeah to be fair to Evans he said that Akehurst and Lintott will be " great players for this club eventually " or words to that effect. They just weren't ready now in his eyes.
 
SteveTreacle said:
I had to send him to a Charlton one at Norton Knatchbull in Ashford. There were several other ones in other locations around here. The Knatch one was certainly full and cost about £40-£50 a kid, so good money for Charlton and a chance to spot talent across the county. My son played at Ashford United the other day at Homelands and there were Charlton FC academy flags everywhere too, so there is clearly a link there too and I am sure Charlton would get first look at any players coming through Ashford United and probably Ashford Borough (whether it be the first team there or various youth age groups - the U10s certainly thrashed my son's team and had some decent looking players!)
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Things must have recently changed then, as I am sure that both Mark Patterson and Barry Fuller have been involved with youth development in some form of Ashford based academy, while maintaining an intermittent connection with the Gills.

If they discovered any potential gems, I would have hoped that they would have tipped us off first but maybe Charlton have established strong connections more recently.
 
HerrLjunga said:
I never liked the way BFSE used to describe our youth players as "babies" and being a "million miles" from ready for the first team. Not exactly the confidence boost needed to get the best out of them.
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Spot on Harris will get more from what we have with encouragement and good coaching techniques.
 
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We don't produce many league one or league two players simply because they never get time to develop. If they are not good enough at 18 or 19 they are largely ignored or sent on loan.
Scally has spoken about youth development before and I agree there simply has to be enough quality in the catchment area .When they get near to first team level they need to be involved in cup competitions etc.We tend to get them so far and then if they are not championship potential or better they are dumped.
 
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