Granted, that we may have to show 'patience' with the revamped youth development system, but the bottom line remains simple: how many of its products eventually become contributing members of the first team squad - that is the bottom line, that at the end of the day is all that matters - all the rest is window dressing.
If you look at the top 4 teams in the EPL - all under tremendous pressure to win - still manage to give meaningful game time to players from their respective youth set-ups, in ways that Rangers aren't matching.
They have a wider talent pool, can attract better players, can hire better coaches and have better facilities.
I understand it’s all relative of course, buts quite telling these teams are trying to sign our best players. City and Chelsea have already taken one each, City sniffing about another one on our books.
I’d also argue that none of those sides have as much pressure on them to win as we do, they can afford to drop points some weeks - but we’re getting into a different area there.
The only Liverpool academy player that really gets games is TAA, Jones gets some game time too, along with Elliot who cost £16m.
City - really only have Foden from their youth academy and he was integrated pretty slowly by Pep to protect him, and have him learning from others.
Chelsea - have been the best for bringing through youth players in the past 10 years - but as we’ve learned, they can have up to 50 players out on loan at one time, that’s not even including all the players in their youth teams still playing for the 23s etc.
We simply can’t operate like that, it’s just not remotely feasible.
United - again, fair enough McTominay, Rashford and Greenwood have all been given a pretty fair amount of game time. However, again it’s only the top players that make it in these academies.
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For the record, I get where you are coming from and we all want to see more academy players in our squad. I’m hopeful we will have more in the coming years, as we need to for Europe.
However, I want them given games on merit rather than their age.