London is an absolute hotbed of talent and we are now a stable, well run Premier League club with an outstanding academy.

There is no reason that young players shouldn't choose us over the likes of Arsenal, Spurs or Chelsea for their development but the caveat is that we have to offer a pathway to professional football.

I agree with the original poster in that we shouldn't use the academy as an excuse for not spending on players. However, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with the idea that the academy can't produce players for us to either use or sell for profit.

Look at Trevor Chalobah for example. He's come through the Chelsea academy and only played about 40 odd games for them and they're now asking for about £40m for him. It might take a couple of years for the new academy to bear fruit but there's no reason we can't start doing that too.

Worth saying as well that I absolutely think we've got the wrong manager for this. Someone like Steve Cooper or (I can't believe I'm about to say this) Gareth Southgate with a track record of trusting young players would be ideal for this strategy.

Edited by Canterbury Palace (04 Nov 2023 9.32am)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

In the last ten years how many 1st team players have we produced?

There lies an interesting question Teddy. How would our team of home grown players from the 80’s got on against our current strongest 11? Is buying foreign more hype than reality and should we be bringing on more of our homegrown players?

How about the legend Patrick Vieira ? Visual evidence and rumour have suggested that his relationship with some of the younger players was strained and I'm pretty sure Eze made the point of saying how much he enjoyed playing for the current manager.

Southgate has been continually criticized for selection of his "favourites" such as Maguire and Henderson.

Brentford got rid of their academy. Becuase it was not making a profit.
They only have to bring it back because of the rules.

With all the usual caveats about training and fitness I suspect maybe two, three at a stretch, would make the current team and that's including Kenny Sansom.
Everyone who remembers that team has their favourites but realistically were they "better" players? As rightly popular as Vince was, and is, I wouldn't swap him for Eze.