Quote: chunkyhugo "Our great crop of academy players that became the backbone of the successful years were a mixture of good player management AND luck. Even Manchester United haven't managed to replicate the Giggs, Beckham and Neville crop that starred for so long in their team. We were lucky that a great batch of youth players came through in that era and it is unlikely it will happen again any time soon. What we are seeing now with the likes of Watkins and BJB is probably more realistic.'"
And Manchester United didn't have a crop of young players that good since the Busby team that died in Munich.
This, for me, is part of the problem. There is no such thing as a "production line" of talent and no club, not even those who can attract the better youngsters from the better amateur clubs, can keep bringing through "batches" of 5/6/7 quality youngsters as we did in the early 2000s. We'll get the odd one or two come through, as we are doing with the likes of Watkins, BJB, but it will be a long time before local young lads are the 'backbone' of the team in they way that they have been in the past decade.
Quote: chunkyhugo "What has disappointed me the most is that we no longer sign players the quality of Peacock and Ellis. When promising players at clubs like Cas and Salford decide to move on its to our (so called big club) rivals across the Pennines.'"
When your youth system isn't bearing fruit the way it used to, that is when the salary cap starts to hit you.
You can get away with paying kids next to nothing and, if you look at the 17 from the 2004 Grand Final, I bet that you could pick out at least two players who would have been on less (or at best, barely more) than £20k. When those players become older, with a few GF winners rings, World Club championship medals and GB / England caps, you can't keep paying them that. The chances are that the likes of Ian Kirke, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Luke Burgess, Ali Lauitiiti and a few others probably represent very poor value in the context of the salary cap. In the past, we have had younger players doing a similar or better job for considerably less that we are paying those players today, which frees up cash for bigger name signings. We don't have that spare cash any more and we don't have the players in the junior ranks to replace those that are "tying up" (for want of a better expression) that money.
