2023/24 RETAINED LIST

You can only develop your young players if they are going to be good enough. The EPPP means that the big clubs can steal all the most promising players for a song, so smaller clubs such as ourselves have a youth set up to just hope that one or two late developers will emerge as capable players once in a while. Also keeping community involvement as well, of course. The days of bringing through several youngsters to become regulars are probably long-gone.

Most of those with the potential are already at the big clubs and they tend to work their way down the leagues until they reach a level at which they are capable of playing. Unfortunately, this also means that you have the likes of Obikwu who is highly-rated but, at present, really looks clueless in men's football much of the time. I'm sure Academy football for the clubs in the top couple of tiers is very pleasing on the eye with some good skills and tip-tap passing, but there's a difference between that and getting flattened by a brick shithouse of a League Two central defender as you attempt to play the ball.

How come we used to have youth players lie Ford, Kev and Dave Moore, Drinkell, Wilkinson, Lund and others?

Has the youth set up failed recently or were we just incredibly lucky to have that much talent coming through?

And how on earth did we miss Glenn Cockerill?

I see this cited all the time that 'we need players to come straight in and be competitive' as a reason why we can't bring some younger lads in for a game or two every now and again or even for small parts of games.

We've seen literally 100s of mature pro's through our revolving door of a squad over the last 20 years many of which have proven time and time again to be uncompetitive at league 2 level. Yet some go on to make 50, 60, 70 odd games for us. We've also seen maybe a couple of dozen lads from u23 teams further up the food chain who have mostly been uncompetitive.

Given the above I'm not sure the gradual inclusion of one or two of our prospects over a couple of seasons has much of a barrier to entry, if after a couple of seasons it doesn't work out, same as any player, part ways.

There seems little point to the current method of a one year deal and 0 to less than five appearances though.

Harvey Cribb >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Cribb

Before Cribb signed on loan, Winterton was doing absolute turd, they still got relegated but when he signed they won 4, lost 2 and drew 1 in the last 7 games >> https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/winterton-rangers/appearances/harvey-cribb/964393

Quoted from RonMariner

How come we used to have youth players lie Ford, Kev and Dave Moore, Drinkell, Wilkinson, Lund and others?

Has the youth set up failed recently or were we just incredibly lucky to have that much talent coming through?

And how on earth did we miss Glenn Cockerill?

May I suggest that they came mainly from ONE school, and via ONE teacher.  Whoever he was, he did a tremendous job.

Quoted from Spurn boy

Two members of my family represented their country at youth level and in my biased opinion could have progressed further but found the transition from being a very good player as a youth to being a good player as a potential professional was a big jump and demands an awful amount of commitment which unfortunately some lads just don’t have. We really have to go back to the Ford, Wilkinson,Moore era to see a transition from youth to first team as far as local talent is concerned which is disappointing and at the present time we only have Harry who is ‘one of our own’.

John Oster and Gary Croft came thru our youth programme, didn't they?

Quoted from Mayaman

John Oster and Gary Croft came thru our youth programme, didn't they?

Johnny Oster was spotted by scout Alec Brader.

Abo Eisa released by Town. Mo Eisa released by MK Dons. 31 goals in 101 games isnt too bad a scoring record.

Can we sign him then we dont need to change shirt numbers or names.

Quoted from DaleH

Not just saying this because he's a family friend and Skegness lad, but I was really surprised that 2nd year scholar and youth team captain Billy Bradley wasn't given a pro contract. The youth team had a really good season on the pitch considering the tragedy that occurred off it. Especially with the progress they made in the FA Youth Cup. And Billy was a big part of that as the skipper.

Given to understand that it wasn't Woodsie or Callum that decided not to give him a contract.

Gutted for the lad, because I know his history and have watched him progress as a player from being a small boy that used to play in our garden with my own kids. It's the tough world of progressing as a footballer, and often those decisions come down to the opinion of someone. And as we have seen many times in football, the opinions of people don't always mean that someone isn't going to succeed. And those opinions and decisions are not always the right decisions. But someone has to make them.  

Less than 1% of the academy make it pro. It's a brutal system and it makes you wonder how our academy can compete with some of these organisations which hoover up "potential" youngsters from 3rd world countries, sift the "weak" ones out on a daily basis, and sell the better ones on for a profit. I'm glad I became an engineer.

Quoted from RonMariner

How come we used to have youth players lie Ford, Kev and Dave Moore, Drinkell, Wilkinson, Lund and others?

Has the youth set up failed recently or were we just incredibly lucky to have that much talent coming through?

And how on earth did we miss Glenn Cockerill?

It also needs a Manager who will take a gamble, the two have to combine.
Alex Fergusson had a crop of them, and was prepared to gamble on them. Perhaps our short-termism in keeping Managers makes them reluctant to gamble.
Who knows if the Class of 92 players would have made it elsewhere if not for Sir Alex.