The paucity of English opportunity thread

Expect he'll make the under 21's (at least), though he'd be more useful being with the under 20's who right back is one of the weakest positions (as is left back for that matter). I suspect we won't mess around much with the under 20 player pool though, it'll be the 03's and whichever 04's have already been promoted.

 

Personally I'd like to see him in the u20s as I think the youth World Cups have more prestige than the Euros. It would be great to win one again. Easy to see him in the 21s though. Max Aarons has been a great servant but realistically he's still pretty much a Championship level player.

 

As much as I hate Watford as anyone here, we should notice that Bilic started to play youngsters. Yesterday there was James Morris at LWB, also came on Jack Grieves and 17 year old Tobi Adeyemo, the latter scored the first goal.

 

Hall, Chukwuemeka, Chalobah, Gallagher and Mount all start for Chelsea today,.

 

Loosely following our reserves and academy over the years I can't help but think Liverpool's academy has fallen behind the rest. We're very good at scouting players around the 15/16 age like Elliot, Sterling and now Doak but players from the grassroots that develop to become premier league level players are few and far between. I can only think of Coady and Arnold at the moment for recent examples.

Even championship level players are few and far between. Rossiter was a much hyped prospect at one point and he struggles with Scottish football likewise Woodburn. Looking at our reserves now there's very players I could even see getting into any England u21 squads.

Not sure where I'm going with this but for a club with a focus on developing young players it's strange that our academy seems quite ineffective.

 

Lewis gets another start for City. Looks like Grealish will be playing in midfield as well.

 

Lewis Hall started and played 55 minutes against Liverpool. Now not at left back but in midfield. Looks like Potter likes him.

 

He’s nothing special though - is he ?

He’s only getting time on the pitch as the others have been woeful

He made loads of mistakes today

 

So apparently he had a bad game, it happens while you are 18. The fact Potter trusts him more than some bigger names is enough for me.

 

He’s had a few games though .. looks mediocre to me thus far

 

It looks like Curtis Jones and Joe Gomez should leave Liverpool for the sake of their careers.
Fans on their backs for a time now, a toxic environment, they should start a new chapter somewhere else.

 

I don't know if it's just me, but this January window has been more depressing than ever from an English perspective. Most PL clubs have been buying indiscriminately, overwhelmingly foreign players, spending an awful lot of money even in this previously cautious January period. Of course you could argue that the best can still prevail, but in the space of a year or two you can see the proportion of English players in the Premier League has dropped a lot.
Perhaps the backlash will be more English talent going to Europe, which would not be a bad thing.

 

Yeah its getting really bad now. The money in the premier league is so much that the rest of the world is basically a breeding ground for players, and by 19, 20, 21 they have far more experience than their English counterparts. It's always very apparent in the under 21's the difference in top tier experience between our squad and others. You take someone like Curtis Jones, he's 22 now and will likely never break beyond squad player - he has 25 career league starts. If he was in France of Germany that would be well over a 100 - someone less talented like Felix Nmecha has moved over there and suddenly is looking a star, yet never played at all here. It's particularly brutal now the South American market has opened up to clubs so they're all loading up on south American talent, seems like half the league has signed a Brazilian 20 year old for 15m this window.

I don't really see how it will change, there's just too much money and premier league clubs are usually backed by billionaires now also. Even small clubs like Brighton and Wolves are able to buy up huge amounts of foreign players and have loan squads, something that was available to only the likes of Chelsea just a few short years ago.

The few moves that do happen seem largely limited to under 21 moves, but a lot of those have no pathway. Leeds I think are one of the very worst offenders - they've signed up a lot of young English talent for the under 21's - but then just bring in people around the same age to the first team squad so there's no real pathway. The youth level is really more of a vanity project for a lot of clubs.

I don't really see much English talent leaving to Europe either, you get some of course but the wages in the premier league are just so high that even a under 21 player at a lot of clubs is going to be getting more than a lot of clubs would pay them elsewhere. In addition, many countries have non-EU limits so they're limited on where they can go.

I think we're already seeing the effects in terms of England, there's almost no one who's came into the national set up post 2020 and established themselves, some of that is improvement in squad quality, but its more to do with a lack of talent being developed since then.

 

Depressing isn’t it and to be honest quite predictable….

Anyway, apologies for not updating the English player percentage data. Will get back on it when I get chance to see what the numbers are looking like.

 

I don't think I want to know

 

It's rather telling that during Chelsea's transfer ban they more or less quadrupled the amount of academy players they've brought through in the last two decade together.

Limitations would certainly make a difference for homegrown talent. It would decrease the quality of the premier League but I don't really care.

 

Me neither. I thought with an English manager at the helm, some of the youngsters might have a chance.
The irony is, he's bought more foreign players than either of the previous managers.

 

It wasn't him who bought those players.

 

Potter's actually been pretty decent for giving the younger players a chance, Tuchel was dreadful at it. No way Lewis Hall would have any minutes under him.

With their onslaught of signings, for ego management reasons as much as anything its hard to see it continuing though. Gallagher might get a few minute now and there but certainly its sad to see that Chukwuemeka will probably be lost in the system, he could have easily got first team regular status at a decent club abroad. Quite doubtful he'll ever reach his potential with that move.

 

Hopefully Madueke and Chukwuemeka get chances and aren't left to rot (on the face of it the Madueke deal looks destined to be a disaster), it would honestly be criminal to not give them minutes with how much talent/potential they have.

 

First professional goal for Lewis Bate. Took him a while to get going at Oxford but he’s been really impressive recently.

Lewis Bate seems like he’s doing well at oxford pic.twitter.com/e3OTK7z2yB

— ً (@Cosm1cz) February 11, 2023

 

From an English player's opportunity point of view, who would be the 3 clubs you would want to see relegated realistically?
For me, it would be Leeds, Southampton and wolves. I think wolves might be safe now after the last couple of results but that would be my choice of 3.

Southampton used to be good for English players but I'm not seeing many in their starting lineup this season.

 

Southampton tore out a page of the Brighton playbook: buy young and cheap foreign talent, only they forgot to build a capable team around them.