- May 20, 2005
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I'm not arguing that we could have signed Drenthe and Heinze - once Real were in for them, they were always going to Spain. The argument is about whether you need to balance the signing of young players with more experienced players, as Real did by signing both Drenthe & Heinze.
We signed Bale, we already had Lee & BA-E. Should we have signed Petrov as well? My personal view is that given he was coming off a serious knee injury, and that Man City apparently offered him ridiculous money with no get-out clauses if his knee goes again, he was probably too much of a risk.
Similarly, we signed Kaboul, we knew Ledley & TG were, ahem, injuryprone. Was Rocha good enough insurance? Or should we have signed Distin as well? My personal view is probably yes, but I acknowledge that that is partly hindsight based on Kaboul's erratic defending.
As I've argued above, if we're going to sign young talent, we also need more specialist coaches like Ricardo Moniz. I'd be delighted if Naybet came back as a specialist defensive coach, he's precisely what we need.
I'd really like someone to give me an example of a coach or coaching set up, that has successfully developed a group of young players and done it not in a super club environment, or without a base of top quality players to develop them alongside. I just think there is almost a child like/computer game mentallity that we can buy up some of the best young players around, coach them well and a few years later we'll have moulded them into a top 4 side. Yet there is a serious lack of precedents of clubs that have done this. I have a reasonable knowledge of European football and I can't think of any and even if I could, I'm certain they'd not have faced competition anything like as strong as the Premiership top 4. I look at the obvious examples from recent years, such as Man Utd, Arsenal and Ajax etc and look at the environments in which their youngsters have been brought through and really see very little similarity with our own situation. I just feel our fans have seen other clubs develop youngsters and hoped we can do the same, but haven't really been as comparitve as they should have been. Is it just about bringing in the right coaching staff and the right young players? Possibly, but i seriously doubt it.