If they produce a lot, obviously that’s good for them. Some of these things are hard to evaluate. As usual, it depends on the individual. A that highest level, in England, it’s not easy to fully make it. Some will, some might be there for a little while before leaving, some might get important offers, some might want to go elsewhere.
Not if you believe that Guardiola has a trophy room bearing the heads of full backs that he has encountered over his career.
2 Likes
Why are so many of your posts stating the bleedy obvious in ways that make it sound like high wisdom? 
It would be nice if Guardiola would give a chance to some his expensively assembled youth academy but apparently his standards are just way too high - while simultaneously being met by the likes of Jack Grealish and Matheus Nunes. He’ll just continue to offload young players and buy in guys who have made it elsewhere before ever giving the academy guys a chance. It’s just who he is, or who he has become.
4 Likes
How it sounds can also depend on who reads it.
It’s not complicated nor high wisdom, it’s pretty simple. Yeah, obvious.
I can state something obvious (and also talk trash, we all do), while you can state that international football is crap and doesn’t count. That can be a personal opinion or taste, but it’s not true.
And I’d have a wild guess, my obvious might be a bit more accurate than Guardiola apparently hating young players, being in physical pain to play McAtee or whatever. But maybe those are just jokes.
So what, we’re also blocking Jayden Danns because he’s met by Darwin Nunez? We’re blocking Jarell “elite talent” Quansah because Konate is on pain killers, he’s behind Gomez and we also want to sign a CB?
It’s called football, welcome to the game.
These are not comparable though. In fact if you go back to the summer you will see @Sweeting pushing back on several of the calls to sign a CB because the targets being proposed would have created a situation like the one the kids at City now face with these signings. The suggestion was not to ignore external options if the kids on the periphery are not good enough, but dont go and spaff 50 million on a young player who is no more established at this level than our own kids itching for more opportunities.
For Danns to be a real comparison to what is being discussed we would have to have two situations that are not present - 1) genuine struggles with availability and form of forwards, and 2) spending real money on an external solution who is no more experienced than the kid who has been on the bench for months and got no meaningful opportunities.
1 Like
I don’t know enough about their upcoming talents nor about these latest signings. I’d hazard a guess that it’s because they think it’s best for the club, not because they have an agenda or something against giving upcoming talents a chance.
Maybe their activity in this transfer window is also linked to fears of having a transfer embargo soon?
Of course there can be differences between clubs in terms of strategy, focus, willingness to risk a bit more with youth. But I don’t think the differences are so big in terms of having the door open for someone who’s simply good enough.
Sure, you also get weird cases like a player being massively talented (or overhyped), having a certain entourage, not being able to agree with his club. But we can say that’s not the norm.
The rest is again down to selection and decision making. City also makes mistakes. And when another player does well elsewhere, there doesn’t have to be a guilty party. We’ll have more players making a career elsewhere than at Liverpool or City.
It’s just how it goes.
The difference is that it is a trend. Only Rico Lewis and Phil Foden, after a long long period of Foden not being able to make the team, have come through Man City’s academy into their first team under Pep Guardiola.
For example, Harwood-Bellis came through their academy, is player of the season twice for two different clubs in the Championship while out on loan. Captained Southampton when he wasn’t even a contracted player, England U21 captain… sold with a couple of games to his name at City (and is now Southampton club captain and been promoted to the full England team). In comes Khusanov, who has less than half a season as a first team regular at Lens. In comes Reis who has played 22 games in Brazil. Not only are they brought in but Man City are praised and their signings hyped as City being smart and finding top players.
Look at the list of guys who are plying their trade in the Premier League right now and were let go from Man City because Guardiola couldn’t or wouldn’t use them - Palmer, Delap, Harwood-Bellis, Doyle, Porro, Rogers, Harrison, Iheanacho, Muric, Forbs, Charles, Lavia, Bazunu, Tosin
Then there are the players playing top flight football, even Champions League football who got the same treatment - Luiz, Gomez, Couto, Itakura, Nmecha, Diaz, Bernabe, Frimpong.
Are all of them good enough, no obvious not, but are all of them not good enough? Not even for a chance?
For what it is worth I don’t watch every Man City youth team game but I do watch a lot of them. Their teams are all incredibly talented. Far more than most teams, probably only Chelsea are somewhat comparable in England.
The good thing is, as a Liverpool fan, that the famous talent ID at Man City seem to be getting it wrong lately. Matheus Nunes, Jack Grealish, Kalvin Phillips… even the likes of Jeremy Doku, Savinho, Gvardiol and Gundogan aren’t exactly tearing it up. They’ve allowed better players to leave because Guardiola doesn’t trust promoting players.
6 Likes
Though if they were good enough we’d have seen it at other clubs. Only Palmer from that list would get in a team challenging for the title. Possibly Delap and Roger’s if they keep improving
Some of them are still young so we’ll have to reassess in a couple of years but Frimpong just won the Bundesliga in an unbeaten season and was heavily linked with a 50m+ transfer before committing to Leverkusen. Diaz is a regularly used squad player at Real Madrid, Luiz was Villa’s best player when they made the CL, Tosin is a starter at Chelsea who were being called title challengers a month ago, Lavia the same.
3 Likes
The idea is these players should be able to contribute the squad and Sweeting is right a number of them are very good and just haven’t been given a chance.
1 Like
My friends and I often make a joke about how FSG would never buy a player if they had Man City’s academy at their disposal. That actually might not be too far from the truth, looking at players who graduated from their academy over the last five or six years.
2 Likes
I think it’s not too far from the truth.
What’s with the
?
2 Likes
I think it’s perfectly true, but of course, even the best academy will never be able to provide a full team at the highest level. You’ll always need some reinforcements from the outside.
But having 60-70% of first-team players coming from the academy, and playing at the highest level, can be achieved. It has already been done before btw, for instance by Barca at their best La Masia times.
Oh, there’s absolutely no question about it, hence the joke part. However, I’d like to think that if Liverpool had the equivalents of, say, Palmer, Delap, Porro, Rogers and McAttee coming out of their academy at roughly the same time, they would properly invest in their development and integration into first team. Which, in all honesty, isn’t far removed from what they’ve done in recent years - you often have the likes of Trent, Jones, Kelleher, Bradley and Quansah in the match day squad.
2 Likes
Exactly, we are doing a fantastic job on that part currently, and the club is largely reaping the rewards of that long-term strategy.
Some of it certainly stands as fact and truth, some of it is really pushing it from your angle/opinion mate. Don’t have to go that far in order to talk about or prove something.
First of all, it’s hard making it at the top level and especially in England.
A number of these players got promoted and got a chance. How many chances? Mainly depending on merit. Level of talent, quality at that moment, style, training/behaviour and circumstances in the first team.
For some, it will be a few games, other than training (people who assess players every day). Like Brewster and others had here. Like Doak might if we end up accepting an offer we evaluate as worth taking.
A number of these players weren’t and highly possibly never will be for City’s (if they’re at the top) or generally the top level. Some still have time to get there elsewhere, but it’s how football works. As a top club, you will have more players making it elsewhere. The aim is to produce them and then they mostly end up where they belong.
Around 10 players of that list never got a game at City. Some were also partly bought as stocks. One of which couldn’t get a work permit. In almost 9 years, even if there are more players than that, that is nothing weird.
Some of it was good business to sell them (negotiating some clauses also) and some really pushed to leave.
Sure, there are some unusual cases in football like I said, that are not comparable to mainly what happens. Stuff can break down between club and player entourage, but let’s say that it’s not the norm or what usually happens.
If it’s true that the level of their academy is quality, coupling that with their financial strength and links through City Group (or whatever it’s called), it isn’t surprising that a lot of young players want to go to that system, even if it means never appearing for City’s first team, but having a good pathway somewhere else. I know one example from Croatia, Ante Palaversa. Him and his entourage knew very well that they’re not really signing for City, but using that platform to improve to a certain level and to build a career elsewhere. There’s tons of them, similar examples.
Some of these decisions are all up for discussion, from player to player. There’s not only City out there and generally speaking, if you ask me, I’d limit the amount of first team players or loaned out players you can have. Because clubs really use a lot of them as stocks to sell when they need to raise some profit.
As for their purchases, yes, even City makes mistakes and players end up not being good even when transfers in the moment of signature make sense on paper. Everyone does. Phillips might be the worst of them all. Grealish was really expensive, but it’s not like he flopped and didn’t produce. We had our own ones like Keita. There will be more. At every club.
Gvardiol had some defensive issues lately (as does City overall), but he’s already one of the world’s best and most complete defenders. It also manifested in the price he went for to City and level of interest at Leipzig. Right now he isn’t, but he already had periods of yes, exactly tearing it up as you say. He’s just a non-comparison with a bunch of those mentioned players who didn’t get/merit a chance or enough chances. Simply a much better player.
I watched Gvardiol live when Liverpool U19’s played Dinamo in Zagreb in that baby CL. Liverpool lost on penalties.
Gvardiol at the time wasn’t branded (key word, can be very vague) as an outstanding talent for us in the outside world (many of which who don’t watch that youth football regularly), but I think even before he made his Dinamo first team debut, he was linked with the likes of Leeds (and not only linked, they wanted him under Bielsa) and Leipzig. That level of scouting and evaluating isn’t far from a City or Liverpool at least being aware from a Gvardiol. And possibly taking him that early (he made the right decision to reject Leeds and go to Leipzig). A player who would be absolutely anonimous for media and fans in England.
Like Khusanov and Reis are now. Not saying that they’re Gvardiol’s level of talent or quality (nor they have to be, because Gvardiol is a top example), but let’s wait and see other than just looking at some numbers about them. Football is pure imperfection on all levels, on a daily basis. Some numbers don’t make sense at all, they don’t even have to make sense.
By the way, just to mention Liverpool U19’s team that day to give an example of what sort of expectations or hope some of the Liverpool general public had for certain players and what they went to accomplish so far: Jaros, N. Williams, R. Williams, Boyes, Lewis, Coyle, Sharif, Cain, Jones, Duncan, Glatzel. Atherton and Clarkson coming off the bench.
Doku and Savinho are both players of relatively high talent (though Doku isn’t young anymore) and already good players. Finished article and superb players? Far from it. In their cases, with City having some ageing players, they arguably went too young, too early. Bobb also among them, who’s been injured, but is a full time senior player.
I’m pretty sure they counted on Palmer for the future, but he likely saw that his path would clash with Foden’s, going forward. He wished to go somewhere else to be a “Foden” who could quickly become a “De Bruyne” if he proves himself, elsewhere. Chelsea are now practically built around him, but have steps to accomplish in order to return to winning trophies. There is not real room sometimes for all of these players. England also felt it (IF they did!).
Real also had some bloody “waiting” seasons (but not on the bench or in the stands, on the pitch) with the likes of Vinicius and Rodrygo, who were very young, before they evolved into what they are now.
I think that some of what’s being said is absolutely true, some of it is up for discussion and some of it comes from the usual let’s find something about Pep and maximize it as much as possible. The best ones (in any field of life) are always under the biggest microscope, that’s how it is.
I think there’s one of the things absolutely up for discussion (which isn’t absolutely childish stupidities like Pep’s bald, on coke, kills skilfull players and pukes when thinking of young players), which is rarely mentioned about Pep. On solid grounds because certain journalists and Pep himself spoke about it. How much they fight to keep certain players when they wish to leave? Obviously these decisions are not solely Pep’s. He gave Txiki credit for finding and preparing Doku’s transfer, which he then approved. Klopp gave our analysis team credit for pushing him to consider taking Salah, which he then approved.
But let’s say an example like Cancelo, even if his behaviour reportedly wasn’t the best. Some professionals praised Pep for not battling much if some wish to leave or are not 100% in it, but yeah, it’s an aspect worth discussing, from what we know.
Speaking about wingers made me think of an interview with Coman I listened to lately and then I remembered reading also some weird stuff about Pep killing wingers, cut backs are boring to watch and whatever. Yeah I guess we all have different taste, for some it can become predictable when someone is so consistently good (or best ever) at arriving into dangerous zones.
From 18:18:
The same is here with Jones and Slot. Jones got or still gets criticism for holding onto the ball. In some actions, yeah, true. But Slot for example said how he likes his technical ability, wants him to embrace it and have many touches on the ball.
Sorry for going a bit off topic in some moments, can go back to it.
1 Like
Nothing dramatic. We had a recent short discussion where we spoke about Quansah’s level of talent. For me he is indeed talented and had a pretty positive last season, a pleasant surprise for a lot of us who didn’t know how he would cope at this level. But I don’t think he’s an elite talent. If he was, I believe he would already be at a certain higher level, playing more, us having more confidence in him (speaking more generally, because form can change), etc. Hopefully he merits staying here for a long and successful time.
Just out of curiosity, why do you believe this specifically? I know that prodigies catch the eye and mind a lot, e.g. Messi, Fabregas, Alexander-Arnold, but don’t you think that by far, “elite players” don’t actually turn out to be that sparkling that young? Given that you’re talking about Quansah, the immediate parallel question would be asking, surely signing for Celtic at his current means he wouldn’t be considered an elite talent?
Equally, how many players were shit hot at a young age, only to fizzle out after a short while and never turn up ever again?
I think with Pep. I find that he doesn’t have the appetite for persisting with youth anymore.
He’s reached that level in his career where he’s being handed money to buy(has been the case ever since he joined Bayern). He doesn’t see the reason to persist with youth anymore.
With Barca , Pep had to play the youth and a lot of those youth were generational talents who Pep did train himself.