Re: Joe Aribo, Lyle Taylor and John Marquis...

By Boomshankar16/5/2019 09:56Thu May 16 09:56:40 2019In response to Joe Aribo, Lyle Taylor and John Marquis...

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The question, "Is losing the Academy such a loss?", is just quite ridiculous. If the first team managers were bothered to interest themselves in the Academy and actually take an interest, which means watching the academy sometime, it would be a start.
I am not sure that Steve Cordery new staines had an academy team and all the managers since have just given lip service to it. You can probably count the fingers on one hand the times a first team manager watched an Academy game, with a view to accessing what youngsters were available.
Once Joe Aribo was too old for the U18's, he was introduced into the first team squad and I sat many times watching the first team struggling on the pitch, with Joe sat on the bench, asking the question, how he could not be starting in the side. At the end of the season Nicky Forster told him he was not needed at Staines and he was released.
Over the last few years, too many very talented players have not been noticed, nurtured or introduced into the first team structure and the club has been culpable of paying ridiculous amounts of wages to older players who offer very little.
Fair play to Joe, who has an excellent attitude and a massive amount of talent which was quite clearly missed and ignored by the management at Staines.
In non league football, teams are full of players who have come through Academies, it is how the Academies are used and valued, by the parent club, which dictates whether it reaps any reward.