So a bit like KM and his team will presumably do with man utd academy youngsters maybe!
The circle of football

The only one of those youngsters that I have heard of since their moves to Premier League teams is Charlie Brown, but that was only in Kill BIll. It does seem like a kiss of death for a young career.

Europablue: Ben Knights was on the bench for City the other night. Flores is doing well at Arsenal, has been around the first team.

Yet another indication that the Town academy is near pointless & not a good investment when our most promising young players can be hoovered up by others.

Ultimately, the academy has to be Cat 1 or nothing.I guess less of a problem when we move up the Leagues ourselves! For the time being, there are plenty of fish in the sea and it's £100k we didn't have otherwise.

Radlett blue. Stop talking rubbish. Our academy is the same as any other, in that only a very few will ever make it. Losing a 14 year old is hardly a disaster. Chances are he'll never be heard of again. Not that I'd ever heard of him anyway. Doubt many, if any fans had.

Everyone always lurches to Cat 1 as the missing link, esp as ITFC have raved about our own academy for years, without material results. Just listen to our new owners, and I know it upset Keiran Dyer who was doing a good job based on feedback we heard publicly, but the ownership clearly see our Academy as weak. NOT because we are not Cat 1 as that has been explained away many times, but purely and simply the lack of players making it to the first team.

That pathway is now the exclusive focus, even at expense of some results at Youth level, so let's give it time, not judge our Academy on Youth tournaments success as a result, and see if we can actually get back to having a steady flow of Academy talent in the 1st Team Squad.

PS: for anyone that is listening at ITFC, George Burley is local, would always want to help the Club, and still remains amongst the most productive managers in English football history in terms of identifying and nurturing talent from Youth to first Team and indeed into International standard players. Surely we should be taking advantage of his experience in this regard, but maybe after all the building blocks are in place.

😭

We've become a feeder academy club.

How many of the above mentioned have done anything to have talked off

Cressi... is that other than nearly 500 appearances for Wycombe in league two, league one and the championship. I'd say Matt Bloomfield had a fairly decent playing career!

Will go the same way as Charlie Brown, Ben Knight etc...too much money, too far from home, too much too soon !

The fact that our academy youngsters DO get poached by PL clubs would suggest our academy is in pretty shape to me, or am I missing something?

There is something rotten with the whole system. There needs to be some kind of mechanism to punish the buying club from hoarding youth team players from lesser clubs. I'd imagine one of the reason that not many academy players make it into the first team is that we either don't realize their potential and let them leave, or they get poached. We had a few decent players in and around the first team squad until a demolition man came in and dispersed them around the four corners of the kingdom.

That's a nice commute for a 14 year old.

we all know the score when you drop down the leagues. Heyho Good luck to Teddy Bloomfield

So a £100k for a 14yr old, and £600k? For s want away, done nothing U23. Doesn't say much gif the latter does it?

100K? Charlie Brown went for Peanuts 😉 (sorry just had to)

Have to admit that I find it in bad taste to monetise a 14yo but that's football. Guess the lower down the leagues a club is the harder it is to keep hold of talented youngsters.

Best of luck to him - I guess for a few years at least both him and his family will be financially better off.

"spiritofjohn" At least he will be fit commuting on his bike!!

100K for a 14 year old, yes please!