Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

is there no dutch phrase for "once in a lifetime opportunity"

How is it that some of these elite youth disappear completely, while plenty who never get a sniff at that age go on to have long careers somewhere in the pro game?

I think luck, attitude, health, diet, growth, contacts, choice of club, etc. are all factors. It takes a lot to get to a point where you earn proper wages and many chuck it before that. Many others are shown the door because the clubs can't support the cost of keeping everyone on for another year to see who makes it.

The best footballer at my school ended up a policeman, the second best became a forklift driver and occasional drug dealer. Lesser players became professional footballers.

Lampard wasn't even that impressive in his early seasons at Chelsea, it was only when Mourinho joined that he really took off. None of that generation of West Ham kids were that great when they moved on, except maybe Ferdinand - certainly not Carrick or Defoe. The young Joe Cole is being preposterously overrated in retrospect by the kind of people with the requisite level of bovine stupidity to write something like this.

I mean BEFORE they moved on.

come on, if anybody's gonna give Cole a free role and tell him to express himself it's gonna be Big Sam

hopefully cashley will also be signed and perhaps the dream team of coles will finally happen

this dream:
Target 2006 - World Cup qualification banter starts here

Speaking of elite youth, Pato has waddled off back to Brasil

gonna perform a cover of the leaving of liverpool here, i'm not slagging them or rodgers at all but really i have to not argue about them at 2.30 am anymore, it's 2013 ffs

moving on

lampard actually was pretty unconvincing until he went to chelsea as i recall, certainly £11m felt way steep

― r|t|c, Friday, 4 January 2013 13:03 (2 days ago)

Lampard wasn't even that impressive in his early seasons at Chelsea, it was only when Mourinho joined that he really took off. (Matt)

iirc his goalscoring record was extremely impressive at west ham in the few seasons before his move, and at the time i thought it was a great signing, if a little expensive

And the Cameroon defender insists he will make the position his own once again.

"It's not a problem," Assou-Ekotto said when asked about competition for his position.

"When I came here six years ago I was in competition with Gilberto, Lee Young-Pyo and Gareth Bale and it ended up being my place (in the team) so it's not a problem."

ah please god ta fuck zeki fryers, vertonghen, naughton and even danny rose have all got to be better than that competition, please god

i thought you liked Ass-Ek now?

xpost to Ismael. A lot of it has to do with physique, too. Often the most successful youth players are the ones with the most adult physiques for their age: they are simply faster and stronger and more powerful than the competition. But that advantage is negated when everyone else catches up, or when they start playing against actual adults.

Classic example of this was Kevin Gallen. QPR mythology holds that had he not done his knee in at Fratton early in the 96/97 season he'd have been the greatest goalscorer in English football. In the youth team he had smashed Jimmy Greaves's all-time scoring records. He played in the England U18 Euro winning team in 92. Made his first team debut at Old Trafford in Aug 94 and Hansen talked about him as a £20m player. Thing is, even before doing his knee, he hadn't scored many goals for the first team and didn't look to me like he was setting the world on fire. Gerry Francis told me a couple of years later - I was interviewing him - that Gallen had always been the strongest kid in any team he played for and found it too easy as a kid, but in adult football he proved to be not that fast and not that strong - hence not that much of a scorer.

I see that, but he still eked out a decent career, had celebrity pals, etc. It's the ones who have no professional career at all that I have trouble with - if you're elite youth at 17, surely you'd be good enough to go on to do a job at Gillingham?

At Gillingham? If your class comes matched with being a big strong lad, maybe.

BAE is clearly the first-choice left-back, I doubt that's even up for contention, especially as it allows Vertonghen to play CB again.

question of numbers isn't it? probly more elite youth than there are jobs? also iirc most of the kids at my school who physically matured earlier had beer guts and smokers lungs by the time they hit 18

took me another 10 years dammit

if you're an elite youth at 17 and don't make it at elite level, it's probably hard to stay fit and bothered about gillingham, which is where the scrappy kid without your talent starts getting games ahead of you?

xps I'm fine with bae now, he's sensational going fwd and much improved in defence. I'd just like to think the fuckin competition is stronger than lee young pyo and timothee atouba or whothefuckever these days

Also, "elite youth" are competing against a much narrower pool of players - usually only a cohort of two years' worth of players. Therefore even at international level, even an outstanding team is likely to be a handful of outstanding players plus the best makeweights, yet we tend to assume they must all be outstanding because The Team won the competition (or whatever). Whereas once you reach 18, you're competing against up to 17 years' worth of players. Statistically you are simply much less likely to be good.

Yup, that makes sense.

rip keith o'neill et al

course, that outlook leads you to question how teams haven't more youth products at a level where they can at least fill a squad berth.

Does it? Not for me. You have a first team squad of 25, drawn from a 17-year cohort. You have a youth team squad of 25, drawn from a two-year cohort. Primary school maths would lead you to assume that no more than an eighth of those players would be good enough to have a chance at the first team squad.

Other thing to remember nowadays is the concentration of youth development resources at a handful of clubs, so fewer clubs even get access to the the small number of kids good enough to play professional football. That must surely mean even fewer now make it through to the pro game because a) there are only the same number of squad places to go round, but a higher quality of competition at the biggest clubs b) so many who would once have come through to the first team at Notts County or wherever are now being picked up and discarded by Man U or wherever c) and historically few discards get picked up by other clubs anyway (hence Hoddle's old scheme to rehabilitate them at his own academy in La Manga and get them back to a UK pro club)

i dunno, i have a standing joke about every club in the country having an "ex-Man U" player

Yeah, but we're talking about youth team players, and virtually all of those ex-ManU lot are players who made it through to the first team squad, not kids who didn't get taken on when it was time to get the first proper contract. There's no doubt that having played four League Cup games for Man U gives a player extra value on the grounds that people wrongly believe Ferguson wouldn't have given them a deal if they weren't shit hot at some level.

my primary school maths are quite rusty, but i'm also allowing, i think, that there are stages of development from 'good youth player' to 'established first team member'- straight statistical cut from 2 year cohorts into a 17 year spread doesn't really answer the question i'm tryin to get to, tho- if there's even only one or two players a year good enough for squad, and may first team, why aren't we seeing, in the full 17 year spread, 8*2 homegrown players, or anything like it?

Cos better players are available on the transfer market at all times, I expect.

but obv it's a lot more complex that that, you can get better elsewhere, you've got a 25 year old in that position already, etc etc, you'd just think you'd see a lot more than you do.

xp

what foul heresiarch is this attempting to sully the thwarted legend of magic hat

kev done notably well for the service he got iirc, rooneyish physique shouldnt obscure the fact he very much had the knack (cf gary hooper). him and dichio were too young to lead the line for a full season on their own in a rubbishy side is all

And also, say you have four top-notch centre backs, all in their mid-20s. You're maybe not going to bother with the 17yo who may be good enough in five years' time when you already have five years in each of the ones you've got and the guarantee of getting money if they leave.

Being good enough to make it is nowhere near being a sufficient precondition of making it. So many variables at work: balance of existing first team squad; playing style preferences of manager; personality of player; culture of club (plenty of top class youngsters at Chelsea for years. Not their fault they don't get in the team - it's a lost generation of young players because of the superstar culture); timing of their launch to first team (those of who watch clubs that struggle have all seen promising kids destroyed by going into a wretched team). Add to that the oft discussed - and probably valid - idea that at the big clubs, lots of kids don't think they even need to succeed on the pitch because they will have already outearned anything they could manage outside football without getting anywhere near the first team (remember Courtney Meppen-Walter, England U17 player at Man City - arrested over a fatal car crash in Sept? "It is understood that he earns less than £1,000 a week," said one report, as if that's peanuts. Never played for the first team, yet was still driving a Merc.

xpost He may have had the knack, but against adults he wasn't quick enough or strong enough to use it. It's not me saying that. It's HIS CLUB MANAGER who nurtured him through from youth to first team. If he was good enough, clubs bigger than Huddersfield, Barnsley, Plymouth, MK Dons, Luton and Barnet would have wanted him. He averaged a goal every four games for QPR, over nearly 400 matches, most of them in the lower divisions. That's not a great goalscorer.

god it's a wretched fuckin system really. like everything else.

xp assessing a guy's potential pre-injury by listing off his career post-injury. sharp.

also gerry said a lot of things, "hi sammy koejoe have a contract" for instance

You missed the bit earlier where I said he didn't tear up trees pre injury, because he didn't (I can remember AKUTRS being very critical of his attitude and fitness preinjury). Gerry F did not reckon the injury made any difference to his long term prospects. But you can keep ignoring the bits where I say HIS MANAGER AND MENTOR didn't think he was good enough if you like, on the grounds that Francis - so unlike every other manager in world football - made some wrong decisions, especially when he had no money to spend. Blindness of Rangers fans re Gallen's manifest limitations always bemuses me. Nothing like getting injured to make people fall in love with the player you were never going to be.

holy fucking christ lmao

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2258430/Ruud-van-Nistelrooy-dressed-King-Balthazar.html

http://i.imgur.com/XAd9x.jpg

I was coming here to post that! omg

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c67.0.403.403/p403x403/3384_419198591484363_149999845_n.jpg

speechless

makes him look even more like a horse

he looks simulataneously hilarious and huge and absolutely terrifying like some discarded time bandits character

isnt that a dutch thing? "black peter" etc. dudes in blackface with santa claus on a speedboat hand out presents to kiddies.

yeah but horsefaced record champions league goalscorer in blackface with santa claus on a speedboat handing out presents to kiddies is, in the inimitable words of marcello carlin, a Good Story

Martin Keown is dressed up like Al Jolson and gaining on him in a jetski, while bellowing furiously.

@paddypower: We've shortened Man Utd into 4/5 to beat Liverpool on Sunday after Howard Webb was appointed referee

RVN wasn't being Black Peter. He was being Balthasar, one of the Magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus.

But in a linking twist, Swarte Piet is supposed to be from Spain.

i dunno, i have a standing joke about every club in the country having an "ex-Man U" player

Let's hear it!