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.

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)

How many home grown players in the whole of England during the 70s and 80s, im sure there's more but the only 2 players I can think of is keegan and hoddle. Our football was technically terrible until the late 90s maybe even later.

I go by what Parish said and the fanfare during the opening, the gist of which was for the Academy to provide home grown players instead of spending large transfer fees and thus enriching other clubs, and creating a revenue stream of our own.
Laudable and sensible enough, how realistic this will prove to be only time can tell.

Edited by southnorwoodhill (02 Nov 2023 2.21pm)

Keep reading posts saying how we should be bringing through youth, we've invested in the academy, we're cat A ect. Defending the clubs transfer strategy, instead of wasting money use the academy and produce players.

5% of players playing in the Premier league come through Premier league academies, that's about 25 players. On average, players in the prem are probably between 18-34 so that's every Premier league club producing 1.3 players a season between them.

You're living in dream world if you think we're going to be consistently producing players to a Premier league standard. Its the best league in the world, full of the best players in the world, so already you have a population of 70 million competing against 8 billion. Mathematically its impossible. You could chuck 100 million a year at the academy, it won't make a difference.