Where our young stars end up

[vonwright]

Just looking at the Max Bird thread and seeing a lot of people saying something like 'Coventry? He's way too good for them.'

I'm not so sure. I like Max, hope he stays, think he'd be brilliant in League One and can hold his own in the Championship. But I'm not sure how high his 'ceiling' is, or whether I'm particularly surprised there isn't a queue of top Championship clubs (or Premier League clubs) knocking down the door. 

I seem to feel this about a lot of our young players, ie we've produced a really impressive number of Championship level players. But how often do we produce players who go on to get regular football with top-half Premier League teams? 

Is this because the very best get snapped up very early (Gordon, Delap etc)? Maybe, although who knows where they will end up. More generally even some of our best recent talent - Bogle, for example - ended up at Sheffield United struggling for games in the Premier League. 

Wasn't Buchanan going to a top club? Knight? I'm fairly sure Ebosele was supposed to be nailed on for a top-flight move. 

Even our best young players of the last decade or so - Hughes, maybe Hendrick - didn't set the Premier League alight and never got a really big move, or played a major role for a competitive top flight club.

Don't get me wrong: the academy has been superb. It's been brilliant watching so many young players come through and look completely comfortable in the Chamionship. But am I wrong to think it strange we haven't produced at least a couple of real A-grade players?

[Guest]

I think the number of players playing as professional footballers over the age of 21 who came through the academy at Derby puts it near if not in the top 10 in the country. If you talk about top flight players it’s still punching way above its weight.

Most kids (not all but most) who will play in the big 6 will come through their academies as they are bought up quickly. Even then look at the amount of them who actually make a career in the top flight or play international football. It can be easy to get excited about a kid playing for England at u16 or playing up a couple of age groups but in the grand scheme of things it means nothing really until they develop properly with age.  Delap and Gordon have both gone on to big clubs but neither has “made it” yet, although having watched them progress from schoolboys I think they have the best chance of any from the academy to make that top flight.
 

The idea is at 24 you are playing at the level you should be so it’s a waiting game on them still! I think the academy does a great job but with the rise of Leicester and now even “that lot” down the A52 having Cat 1 status it will be harder still for Derby to lead in player development from the East Mids. 

[Crewton]

One thing that may still be advantageous to us is that in the last few seasons we've shown that there is a clear pathway to first team football, and that is likely to remain the case under David Clowes. 

It's a fact that there are far fewer opportunities for academy players at PL level and so choosing a Cat.1 academy in L1 or the championship may not be an inferior choice, unless you're really looking forward to spending several seasons on loan here there and everywhere. 

[Millenniumram]

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.

You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 

We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 

Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 

But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.

Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.

Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.

TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

[vonwright]

26 minutes ago, Millenniumram said:

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.

You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 

We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 

Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 

But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.

Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.

Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.

TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

Cheers - this is a much more thoughtful version of exactly what I was trying to say.

I could be wrong but if feels like quite a few clubs in the Championship could point to at least one or two players over the last decade that they've either sold for big money (as with Forest and Cash), or who were later sold for big money (ie people who went on to be huge stars, but moved before they maximised their value). Who are the players we look at and think "If only we'd held on to them for another couple of seasons we'd have made £10million"? I just don't think they exist. Maybe Ebiowei, maybe Ebosele, as you say - but we've said that before.

Really don't want to sound critical of the academy, as its done an incredible job and I'd say its better to supply a steady stream of good Championship players than the occasional diamond. It's just that it is odd that we've never really done the latter. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by vonwright

[Animal is a Ram]

Bird's problem is similar to Hughes'. He's not a flashy player, he's not scoring 30 yard screamers (regularly, the one against Stoke was a peach and I was so made up for him), or putting 10 goals in a season, or 20 assists. Also, he's now an established player. 41/46 in the champ last season, and with 2 years on his contract, Derby (now at least) can and will demand top dollar.

Look at the players that *have* been snapped up - yer Gordon's and yer Liam Delap's and so on. They've been posting good numbers at youth level, but also, as they haven't made first team games, Derby can't command much of a premium, so they're very low risk signings for the respective clubs.

Think Forest are a bit of an aberration, as far as the money they make on academy signings go - you don't see that happen at many clubs at all. Perhaps it's a marketing problem?

It's not too much of a leap to say our academy selling numbers would have looked far better if we hadn't been in the position we have. Williams, Plange, Ebiowei, Ebosele, Gordon, Kellyman all gone for relative pittances or compo by virtue of being in administration. Even £2m for each would have probably be 5x what we acheived.

[WestLondonRam]

I also think that where we have been under an Embargo we have had to let players leave for free or low cost which invites teams (Coventry) to take a gamble on our players instead of them being looked at by the Prem Teams. 

Festy, Malcolm etc. have been placed in the shop window by helping us last Season and therefore at a Free or 500K gamble it's not a bad shot in the dark for a Championship Player who has played 10 games or so. 

Lets be realistic we would of stayed up if we wasn't under Embargo for so long as we would of been able to keep the players and not play them as much as other players would of been in the positions blocking the way through. Credit to the Youth Team coaches and scouts to find players that would get into most championship sides. It's just a shame we could not do a Brentford with them and had them for 2 more seasons and sold them for X millions. 

Look at Mount (Although not ours), Hendrick, Hughes etc playing at good Premiership levels for solid Premiership teams up till now.  

[B4ev6is]

17 hours ago, vonwright said:

Just looking at the Max Bird thread and seeing a lot of people saying something like 'Coventry? He's way too good for them.'

I'm not so sure. I like Max, hope he stays, think he'd be brilliant in League One and can hold his own in the Championship. But I'm not sure how high his 'ceiling' is, or whether I'm particularly surprised there isn't a queue of top Championship clubs (or Premier League clubs) knocking down the door. 

I seem to feel this about a lot of our young players, ie we've produced a really impressive number of Championship level players. But how often do we produce players who go on to get regular football with top-half Premier League teams? 

Is this because the very best get snapped up very early (Gordon, Delap etc)? Maybe, although who knows where they will end up. More generally even some of our best recent talent - Bogle, for example - ended up at Sheffield United struggling for games in the Premier League. 

Wasn't Buchanan going to a top club? Knight? I'm fairly sure Ebosele was supposed to be nailed on for a top-flight move. 

Even our best young players of the last decade or so - Hughes, maybe Hendrick - didn't set the Premier League alight and never got a really big move, or played a major role for a competitive top flight club.

Don't get me wrong: the academy has been superb. It's been brilliant watching so many young players come through and look completely comfortable in the Chamionship. But am I wrong to think it strange we haven't produced at least a couple of real A-grade players?

That not going to happen mate they can not afford him now.

[Hanny]

I was always taught it is players not plays. That has generally been applied to game day chats (tactics vs talent/etc). But I think that model applies to the idea of Academy strength as well. 

In my opinion, any Academy can never 'expect' to produce a top talent. Because Top Talents are not made, they are born. However, you can 'expect' to produce useful footballers. 

As far as producing useful footballers, I think Derby are doing a great job, with the position they are in. I think Derby do have one of the top 15-20 Academies (facilities/etc) in the country (maybe top 10-15). But they are also far less able to fund nation wide talent search like the bigger clubs. The likes of ManCity/Chelsea/etc. have eyes on the entire country at all ages. Derby do not. That means for a truly unique talent to find its way in Derby's Academy, 15 plus other recruitment teams have already seen and decided to pass on that youth player. 

All recruitment teams can make mistakes, and miss something in regard to a youth player (they are looking at kids after-all). Those top clubs have the resources and head start on the best talent in the country, so it can appear they are producing these stars, when in reality its just statistics...the bigger clubs have many more shakes of the dice, and statistically will find higher quality talent because of it. 

If Derby were to go back and establish themselves as a low end Prem team (and all the financial resources that position comes with), Derby would start "producing" those top-talents because they are in a better position to find those young lads.

If you look at the recent crops of talent that have been scooped from Derby. They were all produced/found/etc. while Derby had been fighting at the top of the Champ, and looking within a shout to crack in to the Prem. That along with the fantastic facilities/ and the larger scouting budget they certainly had, would have been very attractive to a youth. 

I am excited for the Academy going forward, and think we will see plenty of good talent come through. And, yes, fingers-crossed we can discover one of those top-talents that others may be questioning. We love our club! But as a youth looking to make a go at the very high-risk proposition of being a footballer, will statistically have their young head turned by the likes of ManCity/Chelsea/etc, over Derby County. 

Of course, there might be a young top talent born and raised in Derbyshire, with the one dream of playing for the Black and White, eager, and waiting for their chance. That would be nice ? 

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Hanny
clarity

[Caerphilly Ram]

At the time of his transfer was their any indication we had a sell on clause for Delap? Fabrizio Romano suggesting he could be on his way out of Man City on loan or permanent. Be typical of our situation over the last few years for him to be sold for multiple millions after barely a first team game and us not see the benefit.

 

[angieram]

36 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

At the time of his transfer was their any indication we had a sell on clause for Delap? Fabrizio Romano suggesting he could be on his way out of Man City on loan or permanent. Be typical of our situation over the last few years for him to be sold for multiple millions after barely a first team game and us not see the benefit.

 

Should have stayed with us, he'd have got loads of first team football by now. I hope his designer clobber is enough consolation! 

And at least he won't be scoring a hat trick against us in the Papa John's trophy. 

He'd do well at Burnley.

[Carnero]

49 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

At the time of his transfer was their any indication we had a sell on clause for Delap? Fabrizio Romano suggesting he could be on his way out of Man City on loan or permanent. Be typical of our situation over the last few years for him to be sold for multiple millions after barely a first team game and us not see the benefit.

 

I seem to remember that the administrators "sold off" the clauses on Delap & Gordon for an agreed price with their respective clubs, so don't think we'll be getting anything extra in the future I'm afraid.

[Srg]

6 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I seem to remember that the administrators "sold off" the clauses on Delap & Gordon for an agreed price with their respective clubs, so don't think we'll be getting anything extra in the future I'm afraid.

Believe you’re right, definitely on Gordon. Unsure on Delap though but wouldn’t be surprised. 

[Crewton]

10 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I seem to remember that the administrators "sold off" the clauses on Delap & Gordon for an agreed price with their respective clubs, so don't think we'll be getting anything extra in the future I'm afraid.

Yep, just like the Amigos did with Huddlestone, to pay a company in Panama iirc. 

In fairness to Quantuma, doing so probably meant they didn't have to to sell Bird, Knight or Sibley for knockdown prices. 

[Ghost of Clough]

On 12/07/2022 at 14:41, Millenniumram said:

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.

You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 

We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 

Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 

But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.

Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.

Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.

TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

The difference is that Forest's academy setup is well established. Darlow is 31 for example. Bamford 28, Lascelles 28, Osborn 27, Burke 25, Worrall 25, Cash 24, Yates 24, Brereton 23, Johnson 21. Dawson, Reid, Jenas, Morgan and many others before them. 

We started from scratch 10 or so years ago. We had a 5 or so year spell of bringing players through in the Burley era, an another spell in the late 90's, but the club has never had a sustained approach to the academy until now. 

You could argue we got lucky with recruitment, finding Hendrick (30) and Hughes (27) when we did as they were both levels above their peers in our academy at the time. The investment in to our academy has brought a lot more consistency to the players we're producing, as well as the overall ability. It's why the other players who're 23+ now are only Championship standard at best.

Forest have Johnson at 21, possibly Mighten next at 20, then probably someone else the year below, then another the year below him, etc...
Derby have Bird, Knight, and Buchanan (now in the Bundesliga) all 21. Sibley, Cashin, Thompson, and Stretton all 20, Ebosele (now Serie A) 19. Delap (19), Williams (18), Gordon (17), Sharpe (16), Scanlon (15), Kaba (15) all poached off us over the past 2 years.
We caught up with Forest, arguably in greater numbers, but the last couple of years will have likely set us back a little bit. Although we do still have a number of youth internationals still with us including DRobinson (17), Moloney (17) and JThompson (15). 

Of course, you won't see where the academy currently is until about 5 years time when these players are at a similar age of the likes of Worrall and Cash.

[jimtastic56]

Florists also did well to buy Antonio and Assom’a for £6 mill and sell them for £22 mill. That amount would have kept Mel afloat for a bit longer.I don’t know what McClarens son was up to.As for kids they also got £8 mill for Appiah , whatever happened to him.

[Crewton]

43 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

they also got £8 mill for Appiah , whatever happened to him.

Still at Almeria. Played 54 games for them 2019/20 and 2020/21, but seems to have slipped into their 'B' team and spent the last half of last season on loan at Lugo, another Segunda team. Almeria got promoted to the top tier last season. Hasn't played for an England youth team since 2019/20. Career seemingly going nowhere.

It was a hefty figure for an 18 year-old from a struggling Championship club with six senior appearances to his name, though he had been linked with Man U and was highly rated at Forest. The owner of Almeria comes across like the fake Sheikh who wanted to buy us and probably splashed out to make a statement. It's the kind of figure that we should have been receiving for Ebosele and Ebiowei. Forest were able to achieve that, not just because they weren't in administration, but also because Appiah signed a 4.5 year contract 6 months before they flogged him.

[Rammeister]

Interesting debate.

FWIW I think our academy does a great job.

The issue seems to me that players invariably leave us often too early to then not really feature in the Premier League. This makes these players appear to be at worse unsuccessful or at best not as good as we thought they were.

Had these players stayed longer with us, gaining more competitive games rather than playing what is effectively reserve football I believe they’d be far better equipped to make the step up.

Premier League clubs go round hoovering up talent and often then sell them on if they don’t fancy them further down the line. I think it’s sad that Plange went to Palace after getting a lot of game time here, to probably now getting an occasional bench spot at best. Kaide Gordon looks a real talent- and I know our finances probably dictated he went to Liverpool, but would he have been better served staying here getting game time and learning from Rooney?

It’s all a bit sad. I hope the young lads that are still here and have come up through the academy realise that the grass isn’t always greener elsewhere. The challenge here is to ensure that we are still able to give them opportunities despite having signed more experienced players, should they warrant them.

 

[The Key Club King]

Some interesting thoughts on this. Forest have always produced better youngsters than us - maybe because it is a large city.

On a side note - who is the best footballer Derby have produced? Either from youth teams or the reserves.

[BathRam72]

The problem is, if a big club like Manchester City come in for a young lad like Delap. His head will see, premier league, trophies big money. The upshot is he may well like it has been said above, not feature and be returned either to a lower league club further down the line having no or little opportunity to build his skill set, resilience etc.

 

He will play reserve football at best and probably waste the best years.

Staying with a club at a lower level may have its risk, but if you shine consistently then at a decent age you might just get your opportunity to be snapped up by a bigger club and actually play like Hughes and Hendrick, it is then up to them to grasp that opportunity.

 

Big clubs will always snap up youth as it is cheap, it prevents other clubs getting potential gems.

If they go on to show they are of worth they may get a senior contract, if not they will be discarded.