- Jul 23, 2013
- 6,947
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Kane is phenomenal and it is incredible what he is achieving especially having not cost us a penny, and has now become our most valuable player ever. I have been reading the forum about whether or not he is our greatest player and I keep seeing a few other names come up in the debate, and whether it is purely coincidental or not it has pointed me back to this debate.
So some have suggested Kane is our greatest ever player, but who is the name that regularly gets brought up as a challenge to Kane in the last thirty years, Bale, Modric, VDV, Berbatov? (clearly showing my age) no. The names I keep seeing come up are Hoddle, Gascoigne and King. 3 of the 4 best players fans have seen in the last 30 years cost us, nothing. They are all from our academy. That excludes Campbell who some have also speculated has been one of the best. Is this purely coincidental. This doesn't even take into account how much better our academy is and the improvement in our player development. Outside of ability maybe there is more that comes through being an academy player. Maybe the wanting to do more for your club, maybe being settled and in comfortable surroundings, maybe being constantly surrounded by quality.
When you think about how few academy players come through compared to signings we make and as a percentage more of ended up being top quality players. And ti can't always be just because the right ones were brought through by managers. Some managers used more than others, some had agendas, some got lucky, but still the academy players have by in large been a success and or earned us a lot of money. We constantly chase World Class players from other clubs, but when they come through us, people still believe it's luck or just chance. I've read more than one time, we shouldn't expect to bring more than one player through a season which is fine, or not everyone will be good enough, but we're seeing just as many or more successes as percentage come from the academy than we are signings. I've seen a few players that have come and go that I thought were on Kane's level of ability recently, and we have a few more who we still haven't seen get chances yet.What is the worse that can go wrong. We keep chasing quality elsewhere when it is likely still under our nose. Again this isn't to say stop buying from elsewhere as there most definitely is quality out there and in our current team, but this belief that we shouldn't expect any top quality again because we have Kane is BS. Surely the logic should be look what has happened, let's try it again. With signings we keep going over and over again despite rarely finding World Class.
I know I also seem against it but I do still largely agree about signings top class young talent as I think again that helps as they get to settle at the club for quite a while get comfortable experience being around quality players early and receive top class coaching before tapping into their ability. I just don't think we need to sign those players in positions we already have quality.
For a bit of fun, I though I'd try and come up with an academy developed team who have played for in the last 30 years. I will need some help from those that have seen everyone play, but I'd be as good or close to a signed 11.
-------------------Walker------------
Carr-------Campbell-King--------Rose
Barmby---Hoddle--Bentaleb---Townsend--
--------------Kane-----Crouch
I actually don't really know how good Barmby was for us but heard he was decent. If you open up the criteria to 35 years you could include Perryman. If you also opened it up to players who were in our academy played a game or two then were let go the
---------------------Walker---------------
Perryman-Campbell-King-------Rose
----------------Hoddle-Souness--------
Barmby---------Bentaleb-----Townsend
---------------------Kane---------------------
I'm sure I'm forgetting some players but on the bench we would have
Carr, Houghton, Winks, Caulker, Smith, Mason, Crouch, Pritchard, Carroll
If you include players we signed at 18 or under we could also include Bale and Lennon. Either way that would be a really good PL team, and considering, we so rarely give academy players a chance, being able to put that team out even against the best signed 11 which will have so many more players to choose from is mightily impressive. I'm also still yet to hear of an academy player that came through and completely flopped after numerous chances.
As I said there are players we have let go that I believe would have made the above team, but fortunately there are players we still have that I believe could displace some players in the team above, so why not give them a go. There isn't a limit to how many successful players we can bring through, i we've done it once we can in all likely do it again.
Gazza definitely wasn't from our academy...
In fact, he was a British record transfer.
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