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Just watched the new Podcast from Dave Mac and Kevin Gallen. Interesting one this week, where they had Ben Jacobs on, who runs the twitter account for the DS squad.
I knocked Ben on here before for his hyperbole over Kolli. Didn't realise how young he actually was and feel bad now.
Some good back and forth on the pod though, although I'm not sure the divide is just generational. I'm Kev's age and can see past his rose tinted glasses, I don't remember much development after Richard Langley to be fair, but I'd say a lot of that was done to investment in the other local teams, like Chelsea and even Brentford, where the academy setup was ahead of the Concorde club (as it was then).
I think the key thing they missed though, when they were talking about the previous regime not using players like Harry Murphy in the first team was to look at the pathway in front of them. I've only watched a efw of the DS games, like the Brentford final and he did look tidy, but he was playing in an area (midget 10) where QPR have not been short in for years. So, I didn't see the path into our squad.
I'm thinking his size probably stopped a NL or L2 club taking him as well, as Men's football might have swallowed him up.
Anyway, I can recommend for anyone is bored during this international break, although fair warning, Ben can sound a bit "High performance", just like Christian Nourry, if that kind of thing triggers you...
Was intending to listen on my run tomorrow so may come back with some more thoughts after this but one thing Dave says all the time which is right is QPR, for decades, have been absolutely desperate to tell you how good the academy is, how focused on the academy we are, how our U16s are the best crop you've ever seen etc.
Tony Fernandes always said he was "all about the academy" while letting Harry sit people like Chevanton and Onyewu on his bench at colossal expense. This has been going on right the way back to Chris Wright when they had Richard Graham and Mario Lusardi and people like this on ridiculous contracts that helped drive us to admin. Les Ferdinand spoke about 'pathways', and Mark Warburton was hired in part on the back of his work with the Next Gen series. When it came down to it Warbs rarely even entertained the academy players training with the firsts, and would rather name a short bench than take one of them with him, because he said none of them were good enough (a little bit stubborn on his part, but not wrong - only Armstrong emerged from that crop for a career in full time football).
In that time, since we exited the Prem, we've home grown what, genuine talent? Richard Langley, Marcus Bean and Darnell Furlong. You've had others who we've picked up from elsewhere in late teens (Eze, Chair, Manning, Armstrong, Dieng) which I think is probably a more productive path for us and you've had others that have gone on to do reasonable FL careers elsewhere (Laurent, Monthe, Kakay, Lumley) but we don't have a productive youth system and haven't for 30 years now.
One thing we are very good at is jumping up and down and getting enormously excited about players that simply aren't good enough. I find some of the stuff around our development team at the moment a bit cringe, to be honest. Harry Murphy's a good example. He's not an EFL player playing Isthmian League football for want of a better loan, that's just how good he is. We've seen this over and over again - Kieren St Aimee, Dennis Oli, Charley Kendall, Peter Skapetis, Tom Hitchcock. Partly because the club are desperate to spin that we're some massively academy focused, youth driven organisation, and partly because fans are desperate for one of their own to come through. Emmerson Sutton risks being this. Two years ago we were shouting about him from the rooftops, since then he's had two poor loans at Morecambe and Harrogate, is now out in non-league again and seems to have slipped behind Scarlett now. We must under hype and over deliver, it's not fair on the boys.
The things I really like that Nourry and Alex Carroll have done with the current set up are - improving the facilities and moving to Cat A. For all the excuses the club have made down the years, if you are going to do it you should do it properly. - trying to get them playing more competitive football (London Senior Cup, prestigious friendlies, international tours etc). - much better loan deals this year. Even if they're not playing (which most of them aren't) that in itself is much more useful information for us than them playing 25 games for Whitehawk. - trying to introduce a winning mentality. I was never comfortable with the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey philosophy that it didn't matter if the U18s were bottom of the league and losing 9-0 to Stevenage as long as the right winger fulfilled his aim for the day of getting nine crosses into the box. Good teams with good players in don't lose like that, and good players don't want to join and be part of teams that do. - dragging the average age down so we don't have Shodipo, Hamalainen and Owens types hanging round to their mid 20s.
(On the minus side it’s still my opinion the treatment of Paul Furlong was abysmal and worthy of far greater criticism and coverage)
These are all great steps, and will take time to bear fruit. But in the end they will be judged by the fruit they bear. Of the team that beat Brentford in that much hyped cup final Esquerdinha has been bombed out, Morgan and Bennie are having difficult loans elsewhere, and basically everyone else has been released - and even those three were all imported from elsewhere as late teens again. The only Championship standard player that system has produced is Rayan Kolli, and we seem absolutely desperate not to use him. Ben himself last month was Tweeting he would tell academy prospects to "run a mile" from QPR over the way Kolli was being treated. Winning pots and pans at that level is only useful to a point - if none of the players ever make it, who cares?
So if it really is better this time, I'd be expecting to see three or four players graduate into first team over the next five years, and another three or four go on and play EFL football elsewhere down the divisions in that time as well.
Was intending to listen on my run tomorrow so may come back with some more thoughts after this but one thing Dave says all the time which is right is QPR, for decades, have been absolutely desperate to tell you how good the academy is, how focused on the academy we are, how our U16s are the best crop you've ever seen etc.
Tony Fernandes always said he was "all about the academy" while letting Harry sit people like Chevanton and Onyewu on his bench at colossal expense. This has been going on right the way back to Chris Wright when they had Richard Graham and Mario Lusardi and people like this on ridiculous contracts that helped drive us to admin. Les Ferdinand spoke about 'pathways', and Mark Warburton was hired in part on the back of his work with the Next Gen series. When it came down to it Warbs rarely even entertained the academy players training with the firsts, and would rather name a short bench than take one of them with him, because he said none of them were good enough (a little bit stubborn on his part, but not wrong - only Armstrong emerged from that crop for a career in full time football).
In that time, since we exited the Prem, we've home grown what, genuine talent? Richard Langley, Marcus Bean and Darnell Furlong. You've had others who we've picked up from elsewhere in late teens (Eze, Chair, Manning, Armstrong, Dieng) which I think is probably a more productive path for us and you've had others that have gone on to do reasonable FL careers elsewhere (Laurent, Monthe, Kakay, Lumley) but we don't have a productive youth system and haven't for 30 years now.
One thing we are very good at is jumping up and down and getting enormously excited about players that simply aren't good enough. I find some of the stuff around our development team at the moment a bit cringe, to be honest. Harry Murphy's a good example. He's not an EFL player playing Isthmian League football for want of a better loan, that's just how good he is. We've seen this over and over again - Kieren St Aimee, Dennis Oli, Charley Kendall, Peter Skapetis, Tom Hitchcock. Partly because the club are desperate to spin that we're some massively academy focused, youth driven organisation, and partly because fans are desperate for one of their own to come through. Emmerson Sutton risks being this. Two years ago we were shouting about him from the rooftops, since then he's had two poor loans at Morecambe and Harrogate, is now out in non-league again and seems to have slipped behind Scarlett now. We must under hype and over deliver, it's not fair on the boys.
The things I really like that Nourry and Alex Carroll have done with the current set up are - improving the facilities and moving to Cat A. For all the excuses the club have made down the years, if you are going to do it you should do it properly. - trying to get them playing more competitive football (London Senior Cup, prestigious friendlies, international tours etc). - much better loan deals this year. Even if they're not playing (which most of them aren't) that in itself is much more useful information for us than them playing 25 games for Whitehawk. - trying to introduce a winning mentality. I was never comfortable with the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey philosophy that it didn't matter if the U18s were bottom of the league and losing 9-0 to Stevenage as long as the right winger fulfilled his aim for the day of getting nine crosses into the box. Good teams with good players in don't lose like that, and good players don't want to join and be part of teams that do. - dragging the average age down so we don't have Shodipo, Hamalainen and Owens types hanging round to their mid 20s.
(On the minus side it’s still my opinion the treatment of Paul Furlong was abysmal and worthy of far greater criticism and coverage)
These are all great steps, and will take time to bear fruit. But in the end they will be judged by the fruit they bear. Of the team that beat Brentford in that much hyped cup final Esquerdinha has been bombed out, Morgan and Bennie are having difficult loans elsewhere, and basically everyone else has been released - and even those three were all imported from elsewhere as late teens again. The only Championship standard player that system has produced is Rayan Kolli, and we seem absolutely desperate not to use him. Ben himself last month was Tweeting he would tell academy prospects to "run a mile" from QPR over the way Kolli was being treated. Winning pots and pans at that level is only useful to a point - if none of the players ever make it, who cares?
So if it really is better this time, I'd be expecting to see three or four players graduate into first team over the next five years, and another three or four go on and play EFL football elsewhere down the divisions in that time as well.
This post has been edited by an administrator
We're all guilty of over hyping the youngsters. The current bunch might give us 1 or 2 first team players but, like every other club, I doubt it will be more than that. Bennie is getting game time at Dundee Utd, without pulling up any trees. Morgan, Pearman and Sanyaoulu have got League loans but aren't being used that much, if at all. The others are in non-League. That's OK as a starting point but they need to get to higher level loans before any 1st team run outs for us. Only Scarlett has done that this year and that hasn't met with universal acclaim. Players not playing League football by 20 almost certainly aren't going to be good enough.
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Was intending to listen on my run tomorrow so may come back with some more thoughts after this but one thing Dave says all the time which is right is QPR, for decades, have been absolutely desperate to tell you how good the academy is, how focused on the academy we are, how our U16s are the best crop you've ever seen etc.
Tony Fernandes always said he was "all about the academy" while letting Harry sit people like Chevanton and Onyewu on his bench at colossal expense. This has been going on right the way back to Chris Wright when they had Richard Graham and Mario Lusardi and people like this on ridiculous contracts that helped drive us to admin. Les Ferdinand spoke about 'pathways', and Mark Warburton was hired in part on the back of his work with the Next Gen series. When it came down to it Warbs rarely even entertained the academy players training with the firsts, and would rather name a short bench than take one of them with him, because he said none of them were good enough (a little bit stubborn on his part, but not wrong - only Armstrong emerged from that crop for a career in full time football).
In that time, since we exited the Prem, we've home grown what, genuine talent? Richard Langley, Marcus Bean and Darnell Furlong. You've had others who we've picked up from elsewhere in late teens (Eze, Chair, Manning, Armstrong, Dieng) which I think is probably a more productive path for us and you've had others that have gone on to do reasonable FL careers elsewhere (Laurent, Monthe, Kakay, Lumley) but we don't have a productive youth system and haven't for 30 years now.
One thing we are very good at is jumping up and down and getting enormously excited about players that simply aren't good enough. I find some of the stuff around our development team at the moment a bit cringe, to be honest. Harry Murphy's a good example. He's not an EFL player playing Isthmian League football for want of a better loan, that's just how good he is. We've seen this over and over again - Kieren St Aimee, Dennis Oli, Charley Kendall, Peter Skapetis, Tom Hitchcock. Partly because the club are desperate to spin that we're some massively academy focused, youth driven organisation, and partly because fans are desperate for one of their own to come through. Emmerson Sutton risks being this. Two years ago we were shouting about him from the rooftops, since then he's had two poor loans at Morecambe and Harrogate, is now out in non-league again and seems to have slipped behind Scarlett now. We must under hype and over deliver, it's not fair on the boys.
The things I really like that Nourry and Alex Carroll have done with the current set up are - improving the facilities and moving to Cat A. For all the excuses the club have made down the years, if you are going to do it you should do it properly. - trying to get them playing more competitive football (London Senior Cup, prestigious friendlies, international tours etc). - much better loan deals this year. Even if they're not playing (which most of them aren't) that in itself is much more useful information for us than them playing 25 games for Whitehawk. - trying to introduce a winning mentality. I was never comfortable with the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey philosophy that it didn't matter if the U18s were bottom of the league and losing 9-0 to Stevenage as long as the right winger fulfilled his aim for the day of getting nine crosses into the box. Good teams with good players in don't lose like that, and good players don't want to join and be part of teams that do. - dragging the average age down so we don't have Shodipo, Hamalainen and Owens types hanging round to their mid 20s.
(On the minus side it’s still my opinion the treatment of Paul Furlong was abysmal and worthy of far greater criticism and coverage)
These are all great steps, and will take time to bear fruit. But in the end they will be judged by the fruit they bear. Of the team that beat Brentford in that much hyped cup final Esquerdinha has been bombed out, Morgan and Bennie are having difficult loans elsewhere, and basically everyone else has been released - and even those three were all imported from elsewhere as late teens again. The only Championship standard player that system has produced is Rayan Kolli, and we seem absolutely desperate not to use him. Ben himself last month was Tweeting he would tell academy prospects to "run a mile" from QPR over the way Kolli was being treated. Winning pots and pans at that level is only useful to a point - if none of the players ever make it, who cares?
So if it really is better this time, I'd be expecting to see three or four players graduate into first team over the next five years, and another three or four go on and play EFL football elsewhere down the divisions in that time as well.
This post has been edited by an administrator
And, regardless of what Ben tweets, other promising youngsters, their families, and their agents, will be aware or will find out what’s going on with Kolli, and it’ll put them off. And that harms QPR in the long run. If he was one of 10 Championship standard prospects we’d produced in the last few years, it wouldn’t matter. It would be a Kolli think not a club thing. But he’s not. And if you want to sell that you’re a development club, in order to sign those promising 15/16yr olds, you need to demonstrate that lads who’ve come through, and objectively done well when given first team opportunities, will play in the first team regularly. Evidence defeats doubt.
Regardless of what has gone on, and the egos at play, if you want to sell the development club stuff for the good of QPR, you might occasionally need to hold your nose or concede defeat and play someone…
And, regardless of what Ben tweets, other promising youngsters, their families, and their agents, will be aware or will find out what’s going on with Kolli, and it’ll put them off. And that harms QPR in the long run. If he was one of 10 Championship standard prospects we’d produced in the last few years, it wouldn’t matter. It would be a Kolli think not a club thing. But he’s not. And if you want to sell that you’re a development club, in order to sign those promising 15/16yr olds, you need to demonstrate that lads who’ve come through, and objectively done well when given first team opportunities, will play in the first team regularly. Evidence defeats doubt.
Regardless of what has gone on, and the egos at play, if you want to sell the development club stuff for the good of QPR, you might occasionally need to hold your nose or concede defeat and play someone…
He should, literally, be the poster boy for the whole thing.
Ben certainly looks young but he seemed very assured and handled himself very well.
My only criticism of Ben would be that he does seem very uncritically onboard with a lot of what the club is doing with the DS - except when it got to the Kolli debate at the end where he is clearly a big fan of RK.
DM and KG asked a lot of really good, really tough questions and Ben stood his ground and gave as good as he got, so well done to him.
Ben held his own well there i thought. Dave is wrong to say going to Cat 1 is just a continuation of the progress from before. The previous regime said on many occasions that they saw no benefit of going to Cat 1 and we’d remain Cat 2. Whether going to Cat 1 is the right move, we will only know in a few years.
Was interesting that Ben said he says “elite” because he’s talking about -U16s and below. Interesting because that’s my son’s age group and has friends in other academies who say our players are good. Anyone know what results we have at that level? I’ve no idea other than what Ben said here.
Was intending to listen on my run tomorrow so may come back with some more thoughts after this but one thing Dave says all the time which is right is QPR, for decades, have been absolutely desperate to tell you how good the academy is, how focused on the academy we are, how our U16s are the best crop you've ever seen etc.
Tony Fernandes always said he was "all about the academy" while letting Harry sit people like Chevanton and Onyewu on his bench at colossal expense. This has been going on right the way back to Chris Wright when they had Richard Graham and Mario Lusardi and people like this on ridiculous contracts that helped drive us to admin. Les Ferdinand spoke about 'pathways', and Mark Warburton was hired in part on the back of his work with the Next Gen series. When it came down to it Warbs rarely even entertained the academy players training with the firsts, and would rather name a short bench than take one of them with him, because he said none of them were good enough (a little bit stubborn on his part, but not wrong - only Armstrong emerged from that crop for a career in full time football).
In that time, since we exited the Prem, we've home grown what, genuine talent? Richard Langley, Marcus Bean and Darnell Furlong. You've had others who we've picked up from elsewhere in late teens (Eze, Chair, Manning, Armstrong, Dieng) which I think is probably a more productive path for us and you've had others that have gone on to do reasonable FL careers elsewhere (Laurent, Monthe, Kakay, Lumley) but we don't have a productive youth system and haven't for 30 years now.
One thing we are very good at is jumping up and down and getting enormously excited about players that simply aren't good enough. I find some of the stuff around our development team at the moment a bit cringe, to be honest. Harry Murphy's a good example. He's not an EFL player playing Isthmian League football for want of a better loan, that's just how good he is. We've seen this over and over again - Kieren St Aimee, Dennis Oli, Charley Kendall, Peter Skapetis, Tom Hitchcock. Partly because the club are desperate to spin that we're some massively academy focused, youth driven organisation, and partly because fans are desperate for one of their own to come through. Emmerson Sutton risks being this. Two years ago we were shouting about him from the rooftops, since then he's had two poor loans at Morecambe and Harrogate, is now out in non-league again and seems to have slipped behind Scarlett now. We must under hype and over deliver, it's not fair on the boys.
The things I really like that Nourry and Alex Carroll have done with the current set up are - improving the facilities and moving to Cat A. For all the excuses the club have made down the years, if you are going to do it you should do it properly. - trying to get them playing more competitive football (London Senior Cup, prestigious friendlies, international tours etc). - much better loan deals this year. Even if they're not playing (which most of them aren't) that in itself is much more useful information for us than them playing 25 games for Whitehawk. - trying to introduce a winning mentality. I was never comfortable with the Les Ferdinand/Chris Ramsey philosophy that it didn't matter if the U18s were bottom of the league and losing 9-0 to Stevenage as long as the right winger fulfilled his aim for the day of getting nine crosses into the box. Good teams with good players in don't lose like that, and good players don't want to join and be part of teams that do. - dragging the average age down so we don't have Shodipo, Hamalainen and Owens types hanging round to their mid 20s.
(On the minus side it’s still my opinion the treatment of Paul Furlong was abysmal and worthy of far greater criticism and coverage)
These are all great steps, and will take time to bear fruit. But in the end they will be judged by the fruit they bear. Of the team that beat Brentford in that much hyped cup final Esquerdinha has been bombed out, Morgan and Bennie are having difficult loans elsewhere, and basically everyone else has been released - and even those three were all imported from elsewhere as late teens again. The only Championship standard player that system has produced is Rayan Kolli, and we seem absolutely desperate not to use him. Ben himself last month was Tweeting he would tell academy prospects to "run a mile" from QPR over the way Kolli was being treated. Winning pots and pans at that level is only useful to a point - if none of the players ever make it, who cares?
So if it really is better this time, I'd be expecting to see three or four players graduate into first team over the next five years, and another three or four go on and play EFL football elsewhere down the divisions in that time as well.
This post has been edited by an administrator
Agree totally - I'd only add: if we're hemming and hawing about the likes of Eze, Chair, Dieng etc for not quite being academy grads as we got them from elsewhere (true but they weren't championship ready when we signed them were they?) then surely we must also acknowledge that Sterling, Harvey Elliott (I can't remember those 4 or 5 others) etc etc were part of that mix? don't think we can have it both ways.
Ben held his own well there i thought. Dave is wrong to say going to Cat 1 is just a continuation of the progress from before. The previous regime said on many occasions that they saw no benefit of going to Cat 1 and we’d remain Cat 2. Whether going to Cat 1 is the right move, we will only know in a few years.
Was interesting that Ben said he says “elite” because he’s talking about -U16s and below. Interesting because that’s my son’s age group and has friends in other academies who say our players are good. Anyone know what results we have at that level? I’ve no idea other than what Ben said here.
The second bit is nothing new though like I say. Our U16s are always brilliant. It’s the perfect PR promise because it’s 4 years before anyone knows if it’s true and by then everyone has forgotten you said it. In my time with the club it’s been true twice - the Darnell Furlong team that won that New York tournament, and the Gallen/Dichio team. Let’s see. Maybe it’s true again. I desperately hope so. But forgive my jadedness.
When we talk about “elite”, it is still an academy where the owner’s son gets the occasional game, so again… let’s just steady down, wait, and see.
The second bit is nothing new though like I say. Our U16s are always brilliant. It’s the perfect PR promise because it’s 4 years before anyone knows if it’s true and by then everyone has forgotten you said it. In my time with the club it’s been true twice - the Darnell Furlong team that won that New York tournament, and the Gallen/Dichio team. Let’s see. Maybe it’s true again. I desperately hope so. But forgive my jadedness.
When we talk about “elite”, it is still an academy where the owner’s son gets the occasional game, so again… let’s just steady down, wait, and see.
But won’t Cat 1 status help us keep hold of them? But as I said, we won’t know whether all this is working for a few years.
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