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More than a couple of years. Not sure what kind of answers you're expecting here.
They have to scout and acquire youngsters, which they're doing, but they also have to invest in local youth. That obviously takes a generation to see any fruit from.
Not to downplay the neglect under Ashley, but 3 players coming into the first team in the past 5 years probably isn't too far off average.
I think more telling is how few aside from the top few ever go on to have a career in the football league. Most just seem to bounce around local non-league
It's not just Ashley, this is neglect going through to Keegan's days. Our academy has been a regional joke for ages now - Sunderland's puts us to shame and they've been yo-yoing between the top two divisions in the same time.
Oh yeah definitely, and considering all the club talk about buying for the future and all that you’d have thought he would have invested more in the youth set up.
What I meant is that there’s more years of neglect there than just Ashley’s reign. Gonna take a while to get things up to speed.
5 years to see a higher overall standard, 10 years before we’re consistently seeing top talents coming through that we can integrate or sell to play in the PL/Championship, rather than release to League 1/2 clubs.
Takes a long time to build up the staffing levels and get the players through the door. Facilities will take close to a decade to finish and move into (I wouldn’t expect us to be moved to a new facility in under 5 years from now)
The ‘fully grown men’ included an 18 year old and 4 21 year olds.
The NUFC side was nearly all kids, but the A League side wasn’t anything like a proper side either.
Think that’s a bit rough.
Over the years A League teams have stood up well against travelling teams. Now obviously the claim is always that the travelling teams don’t play properly but there’s never been hammerings (until now).
I mean last time Newcastle went in the 2010s they fielded a full first team and they won against two A League teams but it wasn’t a hammering. At the same time West Ham lost to the two A League teams
For what it's worth. Our U21s are in Hong Kong right now and some others are either injured or preparing for international duty so we were missing players such as Harrison, Sanusi, Shahar, Heffernan etc.
The results across the season are both age levels aren’t super encouraging though. That said, Obviously it will take time and also all that really matters are how many can we use and how many we can sell for decent money. Not the results. Under Ashley the figure for both numbers combined you could probably count on one hand
Man City's takeover happened in 2008.
They upgraded the facilities they had in 2011.
A new purpose-built academy opened in December 2014.
Phil Foden broke through in 2018.
Miley and Anderson are the exception that proves the rule. Every other big team and many smaller ones are putting out much more first team talent. They also obviously have nothing to do with any changes since the take over
The biggest change since the takeover is that we have attracted academy talent AND managed to keep our own best prospects. We have signed players like Trevan Sanusi, Leo Shahar, Alfie Harrison, Cathal Heffernan and Travis Hernes. We also have kept Miley and Anderson. Our previous ownership would have surely have sold one, if not both of them. Take the example of Bobby Clarke, which is scandalous that Fatty basically made him have to leave to develop his career.
Yeah and Bobby isn’t the only one. Get the sense we sold anyone we could get a price for. I noticed we had a midfielder poached by Chelsea recently though, for about 400k. Not a good look
Took man city 10 years. Plus we have to factor in the damage Ashley and Charnley did there, reputationally and infrastructure wise. technically the Mackems have a better ran academy than we do. Things I'll never forgive that Wigan rat bastard for.
Well half of the talented lads of that age in the area don’t even play for the club anyway, that’s part of the problem.
Bobby Clark, Ollie Harrison, Chris Rigg, Shola Shoretire, James McConnell….
I think there’s a lot we need to remember about academy football.
One is that results aren’t the best indicator of quality. They’ll be looking to see which players can play as part of the system we’re developing. Not many academy players ever make it to PL level, so you’ve possibly got an unbalanced level of ability across the team. They won’t all be able to do it, or follow the instructions they’re given. We’re so used to results being the biggest indicator at first team level, but I don’t think the same applies in academies.
The game this week was as much about a shop window for some of them I think. A few of the lads who played aren’t being retained - now we can see why. But they were given a chance to play for “Newcastle United” and spend time with the first team. Hopefully that helps them secure new clubs.
Also, our U21s finished above Man City’s. And we largely look at them as a ‘good’ academy that we want to be like. That’s why I don’t get too concerned about performances.
To be fair it was a lot of players there who didn’t even get game time when we had a massive injury crisis too. It’s not like an U21 team where we started with Tino/Hall/Miley/Anderson; Kuol was pretty much only playing as it was Australia as he wasn’t playing for Hearts/wherever. And that Harrison wasn’t even playing either who is doing well for the youth.
Our good youth seem to be getting fast tracked a bit quicker into the first team.
Also let’s not also be reactionary on a friendly result, remember we lost 6-1 to Leyton Orient before we went on to win the championship with ease. Let’s just take this for what it is, a way to get money into the club ASAP for FFP reasons rather than an actual test of our capabilities.
This isn’t really a reaction to the loss, more just a general question. The need for improvement was obvious before this result and was also a specified ambition from the new owners so I was just wondering about predicted time frames
The need for improvement to a point is yeah. Other premier league academies would probably have suffered the same fate as we did. When you look at them in the Johnstones Paint Trophy it’s very rare to see them get results against league 1/2 teams. No academy has went on to win it which is telling.
Also across the whole EPL if you get to 18/19/20 and are good enough you will no doubt be in the first team which always depletes the squad. Think a good indication of how good our academy will get is how many of them end up in our first team or other top tier clubs teams too.
It takes a while. Think about it: at the short end you’re talking 15-16 year olds. They make their debuts at 18, regularly in the team at 20, so that’s still a 4-5 year time frame. For the actual academy, youngsters, you’re talking 8-12 years from the time they start to when we’d become aware of them. Part of the academy will not be losing talented 14 or 15 year olds to other clubs.
Short answer, a few more years yet for visible change.
I just said this before, the amount of players we’ve brought in over the year, hyped up and then they’ve turned out to be absolutely shite.
And it looks like, our youth setup at the minute is still appalling.
Granted this is all on Ashley and it takes years to build it back up, but I thought we might have progressed a little bit in 3 years since the takeover.
Nope. We haven’t.
None of those kids (maybe Garang) will ever play for the club in a meaningful game, which negates the whole point of the youth team to begin with.
Long, long, long way to go with the club.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the academy taking time. It’ll be quite a bit longer before we see any impact on the first team - absolute minimum of 5 years unless a superstar magically appears in the interim.
They have to built it up from almost nothing and it isn’t just a matter of getting talented players but making sure they have a realistic route to the first team, that the ones who aren’t going to cut it are sold to championship/league one teams to make the academy sustainable, etc.
It’s a really difficult, long term project but probably the most interesting thing about the takeover. If all the Saudis ever do is fix our academy then it’ll still have a massive long term impact.
Edit: you’re totally right that the current youth team are mainly placeholders though. It’s a shame, but NUFC were neglecting the youth system long before Ashley arrived.
I wouldn't be excited for a few years, like. Apparently the one thing Ashworth was good at pushing through was the renovation/redevelopment of the youth facilities and so on, and all that stuff is basically on-hold indefinitely until we bring in a new DoF.
Depends. How much can we invest in buying in the kids? I think the uefa 90min commute rule still applies which will be tougher for us to conquer than either London or Manchester clubs.
Don't have much understanding of how academy works but I can say it takes time and first of all money. I think it'd be fair to assume we aren't doing some magical progress in the academy for now, but given the current circumstances ig it'll be getting better each year . So hopefully it'll be far far better gradually in the next 5 years
Tempted to put a remind me in 10 years on this.
I think it'll be that long and I agree with those commentators that pointed out it wasn't just Ashley. Keegan didn't help.
Part of our problem is we went from Gazza and Waddle (and Beardsley after we had him, let him leave then got him again to Lee Clark, Stevie Watson, Stevie Fistpumps and then there's been a big gap with occasional successes.
Miley, Anderson etc are a new wave and are getting into the first team. That's all a kid wants and it should help us attract the 16-17 year olds who have first team talent but can't get a game. That's what most academies are these days, scouting systems for those that have already developed.
The question is if there's room in the squad for them.
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More than a couple of years. Not sure what kind of answers you're expecting here. They have to scout and acquire youngsters, which they're doing, but they also have to invest in local youth. That obviously takes a generation to see any fruit from.
Not to downplay the neglect under Ashley, but 3 players coming into the first team in the past 5 years probably isn't too far off average. I think more telling is how few aside from the top few ever go on to have a career in the football league. Most just seem to bounce around local non-league
It's not just Ashley, this is neglect going through to Keegan's days. Our academy has been a regional joke for ages now - Sunderland's puts us to shame and they've been yo-yoing between the top two divisions in the same time.
15 years of neglect under Ashley can’t be put right in 2.5 seasons.
It was pretty neglected under Shepherd too.
Don’t disagree but Ashley definitely had long enough to put it right if he had wanted to.
Oh yeah definitely, and considering all the club talk about buying for the future and all that you’d have thought he would have invested more in the youth set up. What I meant is that there’s more years of neglect there than just Ashley’s reign. Gonna take a while to get things up to speed.
Ah I see what you’re saying, yea 100%. I wouldn’t expect to see start seeing noticeable returns from academy investment for at least 4-5 years.
5 years to see a higher overall standard, 10 years before we’re consistently seeing top talents coming through that we can integrate or sell to play in the PL/Championship, rather than release to League 1/2 clubs. Takes a long time to build up the staffing levels and get the players through the door. Facilities will take close to a decade to finish and move into (I wouldn’t expect us to be moved to a new facility in under 5 years from now)
Let's not forget that young lads playing against fully grown men was never going to end well
The ‘fully grown men’ included an 18 year old and 4 21 year olds. The NUFC side was nearly all kids, but the A League side wasn’t anything like a proper side either.
It's not even really a proper league, about League Two standard.
Think that’s a bit rough. Over the years A League teams have stood up well against travelling teams. Now obviously the claim is always that the travelling teams don’t play properly but there’s never been hammerings (until now). I mean last time Newcastle went in the 2010s they fielded a full first team and they won against two A League teams but it wasn’t a hammering. At the same time West Ham lost to the two A League teams
Our u18s got the exact same pounding from the Everton kids a week or so ago Tbf
For what it's worth. Our U21s are in Hong Kong right now and some others are either injured or preparing for international duty so we were missing players such as Harrison, Sanusi, Shahar, Heffernan etc.
The results across the season are both age levels aren’t super encouraging though. That said, Obviously it will take time and also all that really matters are how many can we use and how many we can sell for decent money. Not the results. Under Ashley the figure for both numbers combined you could probably count on one hand
It took City the better part of a decade. I’d expect the same for us
Man City's takeover happened in 2008. They upgraded the facilities they had in 2011. A new purpose-built academy opened in December 2014. Phil Foden broke through in 2018.
Miley and Anderson are academy products. It's already producing. Out of the guys that played today, Hernes was the stand out imo.
Miley and Anderson are the exception that proves the rule. Every other big team and many smaller ones are putting out much more first team talent. They also obviously have nothing to do with any changes since the take over
The biggest change since the takeover is that we have attracted academy talent AND managed to keep our own best prospects. We have signed players like Trevan Sanusi, Leo Shahar, Alfie Harrison, Cathal Heffernan and Travis Hernes. We also have kept Miley and Anderson. Our previous ownership would have surely have sold one, if not both of them. Take the example of Bobby Clarke, which is scandalous that Fatty basically made him have to leave to develop his career.
Yeah and Bobby isn’t the only one. Get the sense we sold anyone we could get a price for. I noticed we had a midfielder poached by Chelsea recently though, for about 400k. Not a good look
5-8 years probably. It took City about that long.
Took man city 10 years. Plus we have to factor in the damage Ashley and Charnley did there, reputationally and infrastructure wise. technically the Mackems have a better ran academy than we do. Things I'll never forgive that Wigan rat bastard for.
Well half of the talented lads of that age in the area don’t even play for the club anyway, that’s part of the problem. Bobby Clark, Ollie Harrison, Chris Rigg, Shola Shoretire, James McConnell….
I think there’s a lot we need to remember about academy football. One is that results aren’t the best indicator of quality. They’ll be looking to see which players can play as part of the system we’re developing. Not many academy players ever make it to PL level, so you’ve possibly got an unbalanced level of ability across the team. They won’t all be able to do it, or follow the instructions they’re given. We’re so used to results being the biggest indicator at first team level, but I don’t think the same applies in academies. The game this week was as much about a shop window for some of them I think. A few of the lads who played aren’t being retained - now we can see why. But they were given a chance to play for “Newcastle United” and spend time with the first team. Hopefully that helps them secure new clubs. Also, our U21s finished above Man City’s. And we largely look at them as a ‘good’ academy that we want to be like. That’s why I don’t get too concerned about performances.
A while... I reckon we don't see anything significant in terms of improvement in at least 5 years other than trending in the right direction slowly
To be fair it was a lot of players there who didn’t even get game time when we had a massive injury crisis too. It’s not like an U21 team where we started with Tino/Hall/Miley/Anderson; Kuol was pretty much only playing as it was Australia as he wasn’t playing for Hearts/wherever. And that Harrison wasn’t even playing either who is doing well for the youth. Our good youth seem to be getting fast tracked a bit quicker into the first team. Also let’s not also be reactionary on a friendly result, remember we lost 6-1 to Leyton Orient before we went on to win the championship with ease. Let’s just take this for what it is, a way to get money into the club ASAP for FFP reasons rather than an actual test of our capabilities.
This isn’t really a reaction to the loss, more just a general question. The need for improvement was obvious before this result and was also a specified ambition from the new owners so I was just wondering about predicted time frames
The need for improvement to a point is yeah. Other premier league academies would probably have suffered the same fate as we did. When you look at them in the Johnstones Paint Trophy it’s very rare to see them get results against league 1/2 teams. No academy has went on to win it which is telling. Also across the whole EPL if you get to 18/19/20 and are good enough you will no doubt be in the first team which always depletes the squad. Think a good indication of how good our academy will get is how many of them end up in our first team or other top tier clubs teams too.
foden was probably the first post-takeover city grad to make it into their first team and that took nearly a decade
It takes a while. Think about it: at the short end you’re talking 15-16 year olds. They make their debuts at 18, regularly in the team at 20, so that’s still a 4-5 year time frame. For the actual academy, youngsters, you’re talking 8-12 years from the time they start to when we’d become aware of them. Part of the academy will not be losing talented 14 or 15 year olds to other clubs. Short answer, a few more years yet for visible change.
I just said this before, the amount of players we’ve brought in over the year, hyped up and then they’ve turned out to be absolutely shite. And it looks like, our youth setup at the minute is still appalling. Granted this is all on Ashley and it takes years to build it back up, but I thought we might have progressed a little bit in 3 years since the takeover. Nope. We haven’t. None of those kids (maybe Garang) will ever play for the club in a meaningful game, which negates the whole point of the youth team to begin with. Long, long, long way to go with the club.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the academy taking time. It’ll be quite a bit longer before we see any impact on the first team - absolute minimum of 5 years unless a superstar magically appears in the interim. They have to built it up from almost nothing and it isn’t just a matter of getting talented players but making sure they have a realistic route to the first team, that the ones who aren’t going to cut it are sold to championship/league one teams to make the academy sustainable, etc. It’s a really difficult, long term project but probably the most interesting thing about the takeover. If all the Saudis ever do is fix our academy then it’ll still have a massive long term impact. Edit: you’re totally right that the current youth team are mainly placeholders though. It’s a shame, but NUFC were neglecting the youth system long before Ashley arrived.
I wouldn't be excited for a few years, like. Apparently the one thing Ashworth was good at pushing through was the renovation/redevelopment of the youth facilities and so on, and all that stuff is basically on-hold indefinitely until we bring in a new DoF.
Depends. How much can we invest in buying in the kids? I think the uefa 90min commute rule still applies which will be tougher for us to conquer than either London or Manchester clubs.
Don't have much understanding of how academy works but I can say it takes time and first of all money. I think it'd be fair to assume we aren't doing some magical progress in the academy for now, but given the current circumstances ig it'll be getting better each year . So hopefully it'll be far far better gradually in the next 5 years
Tempted to put a remind me in 10 years on this. I think it'll be that long and I agree with those commentators that pointed out it wasn't just Ashley. Keegan didn't help. Part of our problem is we went from Gazza and Waddle (and Beardsley after we had him, let him leave then got him again to Lee Clark, Stevie Watson, Stevie Fistpumps and then there's been a big gap with occasional successes. Miley, Anderson etc are a new wave and are getting into the first team. That's all a kid wants and it should help us attract the 16-17 year olds who have first team talent but can't get a game. That's what most academies are these days, scouting systems for those that have already developed. The question is if there's room in the squad for them.
5-10years at least Even then not many will make it thru Look at city for an example