Would he? I don't think you can say hand on heart he'd be automatically picked every week ahead of anyone else we have right now, average as they are. If GH lives up to his word he's not interested in another 'project' forward - the last thing our squad needs is another Moore/Hauraki.

Personally I'm not expecting another big name forward signing - that will probably have to wait until after next season unless one of Peacock/Leuluai change their retirement plans.

Perhaps the biggest indictment of GH's recent recruitment is to have a look at the forwards signed in the last two years - Cross, Hauraki, Griffin, Lunt and Moore. With the best will in the world that's the definition of poor-to-average SL players.

Name them Nantwich.

Who are these talented youngsters Leeds have lost in the last five years and who would they be replacing in the current Leeds side?

I'm betting you'll come up with less than two, and that one will be borderline.

The issue for me, isn't who we let go have they gone on to prove wrong. You need to look beyond that.

The issue is how much better could some of these players have been had they been given an opportunity earlier, rather than their development regressing playing in a very poor competition in the under 20's.

This is why I like the new structure, because you need to give someone a shot if you think they have it, before they get past 19, otherwise clubs are definately taking more of a gamble by releasing without knowing.

I repeat what I put earlier, there is not many star players over the years who have made there debuts beyond 21. The best players around make their debuts at 16-18. Have Leeds followed that pattern over the last few years, which is exactly the formula they used a decade ago?

Gotcha, I agree with you in that I'd like to see players debut as early as is feasible.

However, I don't think you can reasonably expect the club to have followed exactly the formula that brought success ten years ago. Back then, we'd won nowt (barring a single CC in 1999) in a generation. More recently we've enjoyed the most successful Leeds team of all time. I think it's unrealistic to have expected young players to have forced a way into that team at the same rate that they did a decade ago. Very recently maybe, but not over most of the past decade.

Confirmed this morning.Leeds seem to have a problem in recruiting players at the moment.

What ages were Senior, Peacock, Ellis, Webb and Lauititi when they made their Leeds debuts? Our homegrown "golden generation" is only a fraction of the story.

What does buying proven quality have to do with it? Those players were not developed by Leeds.

Don't dissagree with that at all. The issue though is had others been given an opportunity who knows what they might have brought to the table.

And on that basis, the new structure of the academy, for me will push clubs to give players a shot (not necessarily a continuous run) earlier than they are currently. Which was a formula Leeds did so successfully previously.

For me personally, I would have added an extra stipulation to the new academy structure and included rules for the first team squads, where by you had to inlcude at least 2 of your under 19's squad in your 20 man squad each week, and one of those two should be in the final 17.

Maybe we'll never know how many might have gone on to greater success with the club if they had been given the opportunity to play alongside this once great team that is in steady decline.

As many others have stated the rotation in the forwards should have been done so much better this season at least, instead of flogging the generally crumbling old guard to excess. The likes of Roche, Stewart, Hood, Smith and Singleton (and Chisholm plus Olds outside of the forwards) might now be already proving their worth at first team SL level........Instead we continue to see the same old faces, that are sometimes not interested enough to raise their game in the season's 'lesser' fixtures (all apart from the play offs ??) commensurate with an alternative acadamey youth that would have been out to make their mark.

Competition is good for all.

Even forgetting the prefix 'acadamey', youth - in the shape of Ambler and Amor - I would suggest alone would have been better investing in rather than the older, but no better, Moore and Griffin respectively.

Buying proven quality has everything to do with maintaining a successful team. There's this convenient myth that Leeds's success has all been down to this core of Leeds juniors when that's only part of the story, and maybe our decline is more to do with us not recruiting players developed elsewhere than with our own development structure, which has still spun out potentially international standard players in Ward, Hall, Watkins and (partial responsibility) Hardaker in the last few years.

Weller's officially gone. Good news overall I think, the role he has played this season could easily have been filled by a junior needing a break like Gotcha says.