You can’t win anything with Kids! Everton will try!
“You’ll never win anything with kids” – The famous old mutterings of former redshite defender and BBC match of the day pundit Alan Hansen which famously came back to bite him on the arse many moons ago after Manchester United won the Premier League title with some fresh faced youngsters including Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Paul Scholes.
Young players have often been the forgotten players in Premier League teams as managers look to save their jobs with expensive foreign imports, who quite often fail to live up to expectation, rather than trusting the youth system. There have of course been one or two exceptions to the rule, especially recently with teams like Manchester United, Southampton and Everton all doing well with players from the system.
We have always trusted our youth and brought them through and in recent times the likes of Leon Osman, Tony Hibbert, Wayne Rooney, Francis Jeffers, Jack Rodwell and of course Ross Barkley have all come through a famous youth set-up to shine or move on for big money.
On a personal level I believe that we have exciting times ahead at Everton. We have a good nucleus of exciting young players already in the first team squad – some from the academy and others brought in to support it. With Ross Barkley, Seamus Coleman, John Stones, Luke Garbutt, Tyias Browning, James McCarthy, Bryan Oviedo and Conor McAleny all around the first team squad and then youngsters like 16 year old Ryan Ledson (who has been on the blues bench recently), George Green, John Lundstram, Shane Duffy, Chris Long, Gethin Jones, Matthew Pennington and Matthew Kennedy all impressing on loan or making an impression with the reserve squad.
Add to that young loan players that are likely to be introduced or who have featured such as Romelu Lukaku and Gerard Deulofeu, then Everton are certainly building for the not too distant future. I will have missed a few, it’s easy to do – which makes it even more exciting.
As a club we don’t have the money of a Chelsea or a Manchester City, but we have an amazing academy and a rich history of promoting youth through to the first team. This season all the talk has been of Southampton and the English players in their squad (and rightly so), but Everton should rightly be proud of what they have produced……… Especially when you remember that Leighton Baines and Phil Jagielka were initially with the Everton academy too.
It is no wonder that Roberto Martinez is excited about our youth set up and promotes young players when you have the likes of Ross Barkley who is heading to the World Cup in his first full season in the Premier League and Ryan Ledson coming through who is a 16 year old kid, impressing enough to be on the bench for a top 5 Premier League team.
The Future is Bright. The Future is Blue.
Who do you rate of our youngsters? Comment below or have your say on our Everton Forum
I agree wholeheartedly. The danger for Everton though,and this is in no way a criticism or complaint,is that our youngsters are displaced by kids from Europe.These players we take on loan are given assurances that they will get games in the Prem,which makes us massively attractive.Meanwhile the likes of Duffy and McAleny get their playing minutes in the far cruder forum of the Championship or below. Perhaps this is where the idea of allowing B teams has germinated.