The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Sutekh » 22 Mar 2023 10:12

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Would much prefer Boycie given the back up job to Lumley! he's 20 years old now and even though that's pretty young for a keeper i understand he's out of contract in the Summer and i really wouldn't want us to miss out on another promising youngster!!


Agree - what the hell was the point in Bouzanis?


And on a 3 year contract as well i believe (May be wrong here). A totally baffling signing and all he's doing is blocking the opportunities for CBC and Andreasson!! crazy.
There will be a few clubs keeping eye's on CBC i'm sure of it and then we'll all lose our shit when one of the big guns come in and poach him!!


But then Ince doesn’t seem to trust youth so it’s not a surprise. If he did you’d have seen much more use of Azeez, Ehib, Clarke and Abrefa let alone allowing a young keeper to keep the bench warm, as well as be guaranteed a couple of league appearances. So hacked of with this management in so many ways and the biggest problem of all is the lack of any risk taking at appropriate times.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Snowflake Royal » 22 Mar 2023 17:48

Where were you guys when everyone was rolling their eyes at me at the start of the season when I was saying the exact same thing

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Royals and Racers » 22 Mar 2023 18:41

Snowflake Royal Where were you guys when everyone was rolling their eyes at me at the start of the season when I was saying the exact same thing

You also said Moore would never play for Reading again- and suggested i know nothing when i said the opposite :)

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by SCIAG » 22 Mar 2023 18:52

People have changed their views on CBC apparently based on very little. A year ago everyone was excited about Jokull instead, but at least he had League Two experience.

Put it this way:

- CBC right now is not as good as Southwood. He’s never played above the sixth tier. Professional clubs wanted to take Southwood, they don’t want CBC.
- You probably don’t rate Southwood (I do, but that’s not really relevant)
- Bouzanis and Lumley are crap, but the alternative was being stuck with somebody who is not as good as Southwood.
- we also wouldn’t have been able to loan out our U23 keeper (again, Jokull, not CBC) as he would be required to warm the bench for Lumley.

Last thing we want is for our first choice to get injured the day after the window shuts and CBC to spend three months doing his best impression of Joao Virginia.

(If it were me I would just be playing Southwood. But given Ince doesn’t rate Southwood or Jokull or CBC right now, I think getting two goalkeepers in was a sensible decision)

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Sutekh » 23 Mar 2023 06:43

I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Snowflake Royal » 23 Mar 2023 07:26

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Snowflake Royal Where were you guys when everyone was rolling their eyes at me at the start of the season when I was saying the exact same thing

You also said Moore would never play for Reading again- and suggested i know nothing when i said the opposite :)

How's that statement that he'll be playing a big part in our season looking?

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by andrew1957 » 23 Mar 2023 10:10

Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


I remember watching Hyam and Dickie play at CB together a number of times in U18 and U21 games and thought they were both excellent. Both failed to get a chance at RFC, but have gone on the greater things.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Hound » 23 Mar 2023 10:37

Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by YorkshireRoyal99 » 23 Mar 2023 11:12

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Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.


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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by 72 bus » 23 Mar 2023 11:24

andrew1957
Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


I remember watching Hyam and Dickie play at CB together a number of times in U18 and U21 games and thought they were both excellent. Both failed to get a chance at RFC, but have gone on the greater things.


Ending up at QPR is not going on the greater things, since leaving us he's played for Oxford and QPR.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Hound » 23 Mar 2023 11:41

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Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.


Yeah hence why I said Stam era. The whole period has screwed us over, whether that was Stam, BT, Gourlay, Thais, Dai etc etc

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Sutekh » 23 Mar 2023 12:31

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Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.


I would expect decisions on players to be 100% down to the management (if it wasn't a management decision then there was something incredibly broken at the club) and while a lot of it is down to timing I still find it incredible he let Dickie, Hyam, Cooper and Stacey all leave, who were essentially the core of the young defensive talent at the club at the time. I can't imagine for a moment that they all turned down new deals, though accept that perhaps 1 or 2 of them might have done (in which case I presume the club got compensation in line with the rules on young players moving on?). What makes it worse is that Stam was a class central defender so must have been able to see whether a youngster would have the potential to play at a decent level or not.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by YorkshireRoyal99 » 23 Mar 2023 12:39

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Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.


I would expect decisions on players to be 100% down to the management (if it wasn't a management decision then there was something incredibly broken at the club) and while a lot of it is down to timing I still find it incredible he let Dickie, Hyam, Cooper and Stacey all leave, who were essentially the core of the young defensive talent at the club at the time. I can't imagine for a moment that they all turned down new deals, though accept that perhaps 1 or 2 of them might have done (in which case I presume the club got compensation in line with the rules on young players moving on?). What makes it worse is that Stam was a class central defender so must have been able to see whether a youngster would have the potential to play at a decent level or not.


Yeah that was my point really, it might not necessarily have been Stam making all the decisions there which would be a fundamental issue at the club, but you've heard of it before.

Did we not sell Cooper to Millwall after a successful loan spell there? To be fair, he was probably operating at League One level at the time and possibly wanted consistent game time which he would get there, so I can see why that went through.

The one thing that baffles me is that we didn't have reasonable buy-back clauses attached to some/all of these players or at least a significant % of next sale. I know that will always impact a sale but you'd be thinking that we'd be wanting to put those on a lot of young academy prospects in case they do ever make it good. For me personally, if we sold a youngster to a L1 club for £500k, I'd rather take a hit and sell for £300k but have a buy-back clause and/or a significant (20%+) % of next sale on the deal as we'd benefit from either.


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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Dirk Gently » 23 Mar 2023 12:40

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Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.


I would expect decisions on players to be 100% down to the management (if it wasn't a management decision then there was something incredibly broken at the club) and while a lot of it is down to timing I still find it incredible he let Dickie, Hyam, Cooper and Stacey all leave, who were essentially the core of the young defensive talent at the club at the time. I can't imagine for a moment that they all turned down new deals, though accept that perhaps 1 or 2 of them might have done (in which case I presume the club got compensation in line with the rules on young players moving on?). What makes it worse is that Stam was a class central defender so must have been able to see whether a youngster would have the potential to play at a decent level or not.


He didn't even see (at least some of) them play. He saw them in pre-season training and decided not to take them on the pre-season tour that week, telling them they were done.

I asked him what I thought was an innocuous question about it at a fans' forum a couple of weeks later and he turned really nasty and defensive, saying something like "Who is anyone to tell me who I can pick or not? I'm the manager here and I make these decisions - only me."

he then went on to buy a load of assorted over-priced dross, mainly from Holland.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Hound » 23 Mar 2023 13:24

I had the impression that BT also had some part in that decision making to let that lot go +Fosu but might be wrong

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by SCIAG » 23 Mar 2023 16:55

I didn't think his response to the question was quite that defensive. My memory is that it was more "I've seen them in training and taken my view, youth football isn't as good a way to judge them".

We were absolutely stacked for young centre backs at the time. Cooper frankly wasn't good enough to play in a back four, he was making a crucial mistake every week and couldn't cope with fast players, we got a good fee for him. Then beyond him we had Keown, Dickie, Hyam, Osho, Axel, McIntyre, and Holmes all on pro deals, and that wasn't all. There's no way we could have turned them all into first team regulars. McIntyre and Holmes made it. I think Hyam is the best pure defender we have produced in the modern era. In theory, doing things the way we did at the end of Madejski's time, give him the games we gave Ilori, sell Moore and play Dickie, then sell one of Hyam and Dickie to create space for McIntyre, Osho, or Holmes.

Stacey wasn't seen as a right back at the time (he played there occasionally, but mostly on the right wing). When we signed Harriott and Meite it basically closed off his route to the team. We did get a fee for him. With hindsight, Meite was the right player. If we'd tried to replace Gunter with Stacey then it might have worked, but means not signing Yiadom who hasn't exactly been a disaster.

Harriott was fine, shame about the injury. In hindsight it would have been better to have Fosu on the bench behind Beerens... but a year later we signed Barrow anyway, and would probably have gone down without his goals.

Stam deserves credit for bringing through Kelly, Richards, and Rinomhota. He also tried with Tennai Watson (permacrocked) and Sam Smith (a bit crap), and gave Holmes and Loader premature debuts. He was much better at bringing players through than Clarke or McDermott.

Only mediocre Dutch player Stam gave any serious gametime to was Pelle Clement.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Vision » 23 Mar 2023 17:22

SCIAG I didn't think his response to the question was quite that defensive. My memory is that it was more "I've seen them in training and taken my view, youth football isn't as good a way to judge them".

We were absolutely stacked for young centre backs at the time. Cooper frankly wasn't good enough to play in a back four, he was making a crucial mistake every week and couldn't cope with fast players, we got a good fee for him. Then beyond him we had Keown, Dickie, Hyam, Osho, Axel, McIntyre, and Holmes all on pro deals, and that wasn't all. There's no way we could have turned them all into first team regulars. McIntyre and Holmes made it. I think Hyam is the best pure defender we have produced in the modern era. In theory, doing things the way we did at the end of Madejski's time, give him the games we gave Ilori, sell Moore and play Dickie, then sell one of Hyam and Dickie to create space for McIntyre, Osho, or Holmes.

Stacey wasn't seen as a right back at the time (he played there occasionally, but mostly on the right wing). When we signed Harriott and Meite it basically closed off his route to the team. We did get a fee for him. With hindsight, Meite was the right player. If we'd tried to replace Gunter with Stacey then it might have worked, but means not signing Yiadom who hasn't exactly been a disaster.

Harriott was fine, shame about the injury. In hindsight it would have been better to have Fosu on the bench behind Beerens... but a year later we signed Barrow anyway, and would probably have gone down without his goals.

Stam deserves credit for bringing through Kelly, Richards, and Rinomhota. He also tried with Tennai Watson (permacrocked) and Sam Smith (a bit crap), and gave Holmes and Loader premature debuts. He was much better at bringing players through than Clarke or McDermott.

Only mediocre Dutch player Stam gave any serious gametime to was Pelle Clement.


I guess that might depend on how you rate Joey ;-)

Agree with most of that though.

It was a huge reset and culture shock for the club and not everyone was prepared to wait for a chance or indeed give it a chance. As you say, Kelly, Cooper and Dickie moved up the pecking order instantly. Fosu and Stacey had successful loan spells in League football but they'd combined for one first team league appearance in a dead game for us between them at this point so guaranteeing them the game time they felt they should get was always likely to be an issue.

Combine that with the fact that Stam was, in my opinion , far too stubborn to be a successful manager ultimately.

However it was doomed to failure anyway because 6 months in, with Dai on the scene, we were a completely different club with a completely different agenda. The likes of Dickie and Hyam actually left us once Dai came on board and the Academy pathway was effectively blocked on the chase for Premier League riches.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by SCIAG » 23 Mar 2023 17:51

One issue was that Stam couldn't actually decide on which of the young centre backs he really liked.

At one point he thought Zak Jules was going to be fourth choice. Then it was Axel Andresson. Then he spoke to Tom McIntyre after an U23s match to say that he would be starting the next first team game, only for McIntyre to have to admit he had picked up and injury. Then of course he gave Tom Holmes that debut out of nowhere. And in the meantime he signed Tyler Blackett, Tiago Ilori, and Reece Oxford, who were all big-name young centre backs who he rated.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Snowflake Royal » 23 Mar 2023 18:31

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Sutekh I note that another former Reading youngster discarded by Stam has been called up to the Scotland squad - Blackburn’s Dominic Hyam.


Yep the Stam era was incredibly damaging long term

From misjudging the ability of the young players through to signing crap like Aluko and handing out massive contracts

Absolutely disastrous and yet 2 kicks from the PL


I wonder how much of that actually falls on Stam.

It's not like he was reluctant to bring through youth players, he was responsible for Kelly having a very good season in the lead up to our PO season and always looked to bring through the likes of Sam Smith and others.

Of course there are other examples where we probably haven't utilised them as much as we could/should, but if the owners were looking to bankroll to the PL by signing players who don't have the ability to get there and didn't want youth promoting then his hands were tied.

On Stam, there's

Success:
Omar Richards 0(0) / 9(4) - unqualified success long term.

Mixed:
Liam Kelly 21(9) / 28(6) - great first season, poor second season.
Tom Holmes 0(0) / 1(0) - I'm not sure we can call one appearance much even though he's been a long term success.
Dominic Samuels 6(3) - got a chance and let go, not proved thay wrong
Tennai Watson 0(3) / 0(0) - plagued by injuries, not developed
Sam Smith 0(0)/ 4(4) - didn’t really look good enough, L1 at best

Failure:
Jake Cooper 0(3) / - let go and has arguably passed us
Rob Dickie - let him go, arguably passed us
Dominic Hyam - let him go, arguably passed us
Jack Stacey - let him go, passed us
Tarique Fosu-Henry - let him go, passed us for a while

Now, I may be slightly out and some left us not on Stam's watch, but I've probably missed someone we let go.

For a centreback, Stam seemed to be utterly clueless about what made a good CB, rejecting Cooper, Dickie and Hyam, and bringing in Ilori, Blackett, Oxford and Elphick FFS.


So basically on youth, Stam unjustifiably loved Kelly who was the exception, and otherwise gave out a few cameos and ignored our actual talent.

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Re: The Academy/Development squads watch thread 2015//16

by Hound » 23 Mar 2023 19:04

Tbf Kelly wasn’t awful that second season either, not for an academy kid who was still finding his way a bit. Obvs questions about the management of him

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