Academy let them go but do they regret?
By Ryan G • May 30th, 2008 • Category: News |As you can see, we’re in the middle of building our website, hopefully we will be completed soon.
This week Everton have been linked with a £8 -10 million move for Manchester City’s Michael Johnson who was at Everton when he was a schoolboy. Last year Everton signed Phil Jagelkia from Sheffield United for £4 million who was also once at Everton as a schoolboy, they did the same with Leighton Baines, the combined fee for them both set them back £10m on players they could of kept at the club! The question which seems to be cropping up is ‘Is our Academy doing enough to bring in and keep quality young players’?
The answer at this time would seem to be no. Over the past decade Everton have brought through a number of players but only a few have made it. Players such as Michael Branch, Danny Cadamarteri, Francis Jeffers and Michael Ball have all been good prospects but none have managed to make it to the heavy heights as it was predicted. Although Everton did make a total of £14 million for Jeffers and Ball when they left Everton their careers tumbled into insignificance.
Everton sold Richard Dunne to Manchester City back in 2000 for £3 million. Walter Smith believed he wouldn’t really be a big miss but since he’s been at Manchester City he has been their best player in many peoples view and is now apparently leaving for around £5 million with a number of suitors interested in the Irish defender. Dunne was a product who we kept at Everton and turned out to be a great player after being sold.
However, Everton have brought through a few players into the first team who have done well. Leon Osman and Tony Hibbert have been playing for Everton for a combined 11 years and have both established themselves as important players for the club. Everyone knows about the success of Wayne Rooney who did make Everton a reported £30 million profit on the striker.
Also James Vaughan and Victor Anichebe have also recently broken into the first-team over the last couple of years but there are doubts about both players. Anichebe only seems to be effective when he comes off the bench and Vaughan has had horrendous injury problems.
“Last year Everton signed Phil Jagelkia from Sheffield United for £4 million who was also once at Everton as a schoolboy, they did the same with Leighton Baines, the combined fee for them both set them back £10m on players they could of kept at the club!”
Everton believe that moving to Finch Farm will help the academy players with brand new facilities and they can also brush shoulders with the first-team squad. However, surely it really comes down to academy staff being able to develop and judge the youth players right to help Everton F.C continue to move forward and prosper.
If the new batch of youth players such as Jack Rodwell, John Paul Kissock and Jose Baxter fail to break into the first-team squad then Everton need to seriously think about restructuring their youth system.
And now, if the move for Michael Johnson DOES go through, Everton could be seen to be wasting £10m they didn’t need to spend, if their academy could / had spotted talent whilst at Everton.
Leave your thoughts below.
I agree, I honestly believe that we should be looking at our academy more often for players then we are now, ok, they’ve brought in a footballing great in Wayne Rooney but I’m struggling to think of anyone else.
I’m disappointed that our Academy let them go and now were going back in for them, just a waste of money and the academy might as well not be there!
Interesting read man, but academy can’t get it right all times, can it?
Playing devils advocate, but maybe being let go as a youngster from an academy made them the players they were. Annoying when you look at the financial implications but you cant pick up a crystal ball down tesco’s.
Richard Dunne wasn’t let go by the academy, but the manager, so i dont think you can use that example in the debate.
Agree with Matt, Dunne was let go by the manager, as he was not good enough for us, so, he was sold. Then that made him what he is today, he should of been kept, but player of that quality we can keep now, unlike a few years ago.
There have been too many times when there were youth players coming through who were apparently the new ‘owen’ or someone along those lines and failed miserable. Then there are players such as Jagelkia, Baines and Michael Johnson who are all good players who were judged to be not good enough for the top level. If the same scout said it for all three he should be sacked.
Like Michael Johnson is apparently the ‘new gerrard’.
Is that a good thing or not? “_”
Many times a player gets beter by developing his game by playing first team ball. When Everton cannot offer that as perhaps we were too strong at that particular position at the time then the player moes on gets better and comes back. Seems logical to me.
Few shed tears when Dunne left he was unreliable on and off the park. Only for likes of Keegan and Pearce persisting with him he’d have been out the game by now. Jagielka admitted himself that with hindsight being let go was the makings of him. But the combined fees of buyin back what we let go does raise serious questions about what the academy is doing to develop youth players – what about more loans to get the first team experience needed like with Ossie.
I’m not sure that Moyes rates the academy very highly because of the amount of youth players he has signed from other clubs. Turner, Ruddy, Gosling, Spencer and Jutkiewicz to name a few.
I don’t believe there is any regrets. Firstly i’m personally a believer in looking forward not backward anyway. But it wasn’t Moyes who sold him so there can be no recriminations now, also, for the years he’s been away we would have paid him over £8m in wages had he been with the club.
Had we kept any half decent players and not been as bad as we were then we might not have bought the players we have to fill the places, I believe our players we currently have are better than Dunne so I dont see any cause for regret.
The same I believe can be said of Jagielka in the wages we saved. Plus the experience he gained in a heavily relied upon role at Sheff U compared to what games/opportunities he would have got at Everton have IMO made him the player he is. I’d argue the same point for Baines, but to a lesser extent as his experience isn’t as much, but, all in all i’m not a bit bothered we’ve sold them and then bought them back.
If the academy can’t see potential at a young age then they should be sacked for not doing their job in my opinion. 🙂
“for the years he’s been away we would have paid him over £8m in wages had he been with the club”
of course we wouldn’t, don’t be daft…
I think we should have far more players coming through than we have but I don’t dwell on ‘the ones that got away’ – The RS have let far more go than us but as much as it pains me to say it, maybe we should take a leaf out of United’s book and loan out young players for a Season or so to let them develop. We do half of this at the moment – We loan out and then seel them to Club. What’s all that about?????
One of the hard facts is that players such as Baines and Jagielka have matured in the way they have precisely by not being at Everton. Had we kept onto them they would likely have not developed and would not be the players they are today. We simply cannot put 4-5 academy players into the first eleven for a full season, it would turn out disastrous however that is the only way the players would actually develop. As such the money spent on Jagielka and Baines is not money lost or wasted at all, they would not exist as the players they are had we kept onto them.
As for Richard Dunne leaving that is an entirely different issue, based on whether or not we should have sold him and quite frankly Walter Smith is the worst manager Everton have had in my lifetime, even over Mike Walker. The same for Rooney, Jeffers etc, we sold them for whatever reasons and that should be praise not criticism for the academy.
To sum up, only a few players can make the cut, academy players will have a detrimental effect on the first team in the short-term unless they are real wonderkids, apart from Rooney we don’t have any examples of that. If some have to go and return later, we will not be buying the same player as the one we kept on.
Nice to hear some good thoughts on this so far.