Wolves Academy Thread

[andyc225]

Wasn't Stinger-Moth one of those who had various altercations with his fellow students during his time with us?

He regularly gets talked up by the other youth players in the programme. I don't know what goes on behind closed doors though.

 

[Jolemai]

From this article:

“We’ve already sold one of our young players (Regan Upton) to Wolves and they recognise what we’re trying to do and the environment we’ve created.”

Who, when, what?

All I get from the official website it:

Regan Upton
Midfielder

Regan is from Burton upon Trent where he attended John Taylor High School.
He spent some time as a registered player at Burton Albion before joining Wolves Academy at the age of 15 and playing regularly for our Under 16 squad in Premier League fixtures.

 

[andyc225]

We should set up an agreement with a club like Burton to loan our youth players and get them playing in meaningful games in front of paying customers. Zeli seems to be doing well for them.

 

[Penk Wolf]

From this article:



Who, when, what?

All I get from the official website it:

Regan Upton
Midfielder

Regan is from Burton upon Trent where he attended John Taylor High School.
He spent some time as a registered player at Burton Albion before joining Wolves Academy at the age of 15 and playing regularly for our Under 16 squad in Premier League fixtures.

I think we signed him on deadline day in the summer.

 

[Penk Wolf]

From this article:



Who, when, what?

All I get from the official website it:

Regan Upton
Midfielder

Regan is from Burton upon Trent where he attended John Taylor High School.
He spent some time as a registered player at Burton Albion before joining Wolves Academy at the age of 15 and playing regularly for our Under 16 squad in Premier League fixtures.

Signed him in the summer of 2012 according to Comptonstars.

 

[Sniffer]

September 2012.

Jabba created the following thread.

Stale gets (one of) Brewers' Troop

http://www.wolvesforum.co.uk/search.php?searchid=195543

 

[andyc225]

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11676/9165327

Richard Scudamore would like to offer us more goggle box money for playing U23 games at the Molineux. His new U23 league will replace the current U21 Premier League.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

I don't see how allowing slightly older players and televising some matches in empty stadiums is going to make it anymore conpetitive. The Spanish way of having B teams compete further down the pyramid seems the only true way to get them playing competitive football but England already has a massively bloated pyramid and the smaller clubs wouldn't agree to it anyway. I suppose you could try and force bigger clubs to adopt smaller local clubs as their B teams and do away with their own reserve teams but that isn't going to go down well with many either I wouldn't have thought.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Sorry Mark, but I disagree that the current pyramid is bloated. What it needs is re-structuring in a more geographical friendly way. Some of the travelling involved lower down the pyramid is causing severe financial hardships for a number of clubs.

At the moment quite a few clubs in the pyramid system play their reserve team lower down the pyramid, which has helped the development of players.

As for the new "B" league, a lot of people were against reverting back to under 23 football, as nowadays, at 23 years of age most players are playing first team football, albeit at different levels. But the Premier league were determined to push it through and have finally got their way.

 

[big mean bunny]

raising the age to 23 I have been in favour of and pushing for a while. Male athletes can still be developing up until 24 physically in some cases. Also the average age of a player making a premier league debut is just over 23 according to what I was told on an FA course last season, so this seems to be a direct result of what ever study that was from.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

Sorry Mark, but I disagree that the current pyramid is bloated. What it needs is re-structuring in a more geographical friendly way. Some of the travelling involved lower down the pyramid is causing severe financial hardships for a number of clubs.

At the moment quite a few clubs in the pyramid system play their reserve team lower down the pyramid, which has helped the development of players.

As for the new "B" league, a lot of people were against reverting back to under 23 football, as nowadays, at 23 years of age most players are playing first team football, albeit at different levels. But the Premier league were determined to push it through and have finally got their way.

There are far too many clubs in this country that gone professional when they shouldn't have, now they struggle to make ends meet. If you threw a load of PL reserve teams down there to mix it up then you'd push even more of those smaller clubs out and create even greater financial problems for the clubs that should never have been professional anyway.

raising the age to 23 I have been in favour of and pushing for a while. Male athletes can still be developing up until 24 physically in some cases. Also the average age of a player making a premier league debut is just over 23 according to what I was told on an FA course last season, so this seems to be a direct result of what ever study that was from.

I think by specifying a PL debut for that statistic you make it incredibly skewed. How old were the likes of Grant Holt and Ricky Lambert on their PL debuts? Yet they'd been playing first team football for years and years before that. I'd imagine the average debut age in the football league would be considerably lower.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

raising the age to 23 I have been in favour of and pushing for a while. Male athletes can still be developing up until 24 physically in some cases. Also the average age of a player making a premier league debut is just over 23 according to what I was told on an FA course last season, so this seems to be a direct result of what ever study that was from.

The major issue with that is the words "Premier League debuts". There are 72 other clubs in the football league, plus many more in the pyramid system. I wonder what the average age is of players making their debuts below the Premier League? Football is about a lot more than the 20 clubs in the top division.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

There are far too many clubs in this country that gone professional when they shouldn't have, now they struggle to make ends meet. If you threw a load of PL reserve teams down there to mix it up then you'd push even more of those smaller clubs out and create even greater financial problems for the clubs that should never have been professional anyway.

Mark, you said earlier that the pyramid system was bloated, and now you mention professional clubs. Below conference level, I do not know of any clubs in the pyramid that are full time professional clubs.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

I was talking professional clubs with my first comment, just neglected to stick it in there. Got 116 clubs playing in nationwide leagues, majority of whom are going to be professional. For a country of our size that just seems far too many. When you compare to someone like Germany, significatly bigger and more heavily populated than ourselves who have 3 nationwide leagues containing just 56 teams.

 

[andyc225]

In my opinion the presence of the TV cameras and therefore an audience watching at home will be of benefit. We need to get over this "it's only youth football; the result doesn't really matter" mentality as a fanbase and as a club. I think that the level of coverage the U21s, U18s and U16s get at Wolves at the moment is a disgrace. Why does it take more than a week in some cases to produce something as simple as a match report on the official website? Wolves can be (very rightly) proud of the achievements of its young players but more needs to be done. The idea of the PL scheduling U23 games for the Molineux and putting them on Sky regularly would bring our fantastic youth setup even closer to the forefront of what we do.

On the flip side, any additional competitive element could make the situation for English players worse. As much as it would give everyone concerned an intense sense of pride to see a first XI built entirely from players born within a 30 mile radius of the Molineux it's just not possible. Our scouting net has to reach as far and wide as it possibly can. In Jack Price, Danny Batth and EEL we've brought through more local players in one year than many clubs can hope to in quite some time but we have to realise how lucky that makes us. A return to the Championship will mean that a return to the foreign market for first team players is inevitable (given the spending power we have). With those players will come another group of young foreign players for the youth team to replace young local players who have been released. The truth is; no matter what the likes of Scudamore and his cronies at moneyball league headquarters think, this will not lead to any increase in the numbers of young English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish players.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

I was talking professional clubs with my first comment, just neglected to stick it in there. Got 116 clubs playing in nationwide leagues, majority of whom are going to be professional. For a country of our size that just seems far too many. When you compare to someone like Germany, significatly bigger and more heavily populated than ourselves who have 3 nationwide leagues containing just 56 teams.

My apologies, I misunderstood what you meant. I agree that 116 professional clubs is too many, but how do you reduce it? Putting under23 clubs into league two, or the conference would never be voted for at the football league AGM.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

Would playing in front of a reasonable sized live crowd not be better experience than playing in front of cameras? Televising the games is only going to deter more people from going to watch.

 

[andyc225]

My apologies, I misunderstood what you meant. I agree that 116 professional clubs is too many, but how do you reduce it? Putting under23 clubs into league two, or the conference would never be voted for at the football league AGM.

112 officially professional teams plus 4 teams whose players are officially semi-pro but earn enough to live on without other jobs is a lot but the levels of investment in non-league football are growing. There's nothing to stop someone who is "fit and proper" to come into a team like Dorchester Town with the dream of League Two football. He or she could tell all the players that their wages are being increased so that they can become full time.

The same thing is happening at the highest levels of regional football in Germany. The TV money of the 2e Bundesliga and the 3e Liga are the dream and clubs in the regional leagues are becoming fully professional in order to compete. Hoffenheim is the classic example; a nothing club from a small village at the side of a motorway has worked its way up over the last 10 years or so from the local amateur league to the Bundesliga. It won't be long before a similar thing happens here.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

My apologies, I misunderstood what you meant. I agree that 116 professional clubs is too many, but how do you reduce it? Putting under23 clubs into league two, or the conference would never be voted for at the football league AGM.

I don't think they'd agree to it either, I think trying to merge bigger/smaller clubs in the same areas and doing away with reserve teams to create B teams is the cleanest solution but no more likely.

City and United could take up someone like Stockport, Oldham or Bury to be their B team. That'd provide the smaller team with a far more solid financial footing but no doubt pride and rivalries would stand in the way of such.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

I don't think they'd agree to it either, I think trying to merge bigger/smaller clubs in the same areas and doing away with reserve teams to create B teams is the cleanest solution but no more likely.

City and United could take up someone like Stockport, Oldham or Bury to be their B team. That'd provide the smaller team with a far more solid financial footing but no doubt pride and rivalries would stand in the way of such.

If I were a supporter of Stockport County, Oldham Athletic, or Bury, I would be extremely annoyed if my team were to lose their identity.