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Sergi Canos

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I don't really know the rights and the wrongs of Rafa's policy of bringing in loads of mediocre youngsters, but if, as he'd claim, it *was* a necessary step towards changing the system to what we have now, it was more than worth it. Besides, the money from Insua and San Jose and a few others must've covered the costs to a large extent anyway.
 
peterhague said:
I don't really know the rights and the wrongs of Rafa's policy of bringing in loads of mediocre youngsters, but if, as he'd claim, it *was* a necessary step towards changing the system to what we have now, it was more than worth it. Besides, the money from Insua and San Jose and a few others must've covered the costs to a large extent anyway.
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Why are you guys being so harsh on Rafa's early youth purchases?

San Jose - starting CB for a La Liga team.
Insua - starting in Portugal etc
Hobbs - Championship
Roque - was having a solid career before cancer. RIP in lad

etc
 
LeTallecWiz said:
Modo & Keni have said we bought Wisdom - isn't he one of the local lads who came up through the Academy ranks?
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No, we signed him from Bradford when he was about 14. Not sure what we paid for him but he was very highly rated right from the start.
 
Rosco said:
Shelvey and Sterling worked out pretty well.

I wouldn't look at Rafas ones as indicative of anything since they were brought in mainly because he was in a strop with the academy, not because they were great.
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Our academy was producing the square root of fuck all. Our academy is now boss.
 
LeTallecWiz said:
Why are you guys being so harsh on Rafa's early youth purchases?

San Jose - starting CB for a La Liga team.
Insua - starting in Portugal etc
Hobbs - Championship
Roque - was having a solid career before cancer. RIP in lad

etc
Click to expand...


I'm not being particularly harsh. There were plenty of good signings. But there was also a good 20 players he signed who had almost no chance of making it, and Rafa must've known that. That's bound to irritate people, no matter the reasons he might have had.
 
peterhague said:
I'm not being particularly harsh. There were plenty of good signings. But there was also a good 20 players he signed who had almost no chance of making it, and Rafa must've known that. That's bound to irritate people, no matter the reasons he might have had.
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It was very much a scattergun approach, which I was critical of at the time but I guess looking back there were at least some mitigating factors (i.e the political power plays going on at the time).
 
Rafa's legacy with the youth is there for all to see. Of course not every player brought in will make the grade but his masterstroke was bringing in the Spanish coaches that are heavily influencing our style in the youth ranks. Looking at the young stars packed in the junior ranks, our future team will be boss. They will also qualify as homegrown players.

I'm quite excited. There's no doubt that our future is bright.
 
I feel Benitez often gets incorrectly credited for the work with/of the academy. IMO, he should get the credit for having the vision of what it should be like and how it should be run, and then getting the right guys - McParland, Borrell and Segura - to run the program. The bulk of the work in identifying, bringing in and nurturing the talents we have now need to be credited to the team of guys he brought in.
 
Binny said:
Apparently it means: "Now is the day to say goodbye. A shame to let so many things here. Thanks for everything"

Also twitted a picture of the La Masia academy
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the day has come to go, sad to leave so many things here, thanks for everything, i will never tire of saying that.
 
studsup said:
I feel Benitez often gets incorrectly credited for the work with/of the academy. IMO, he should get the credit for having the vision of what it should be like and how it should be run, and then getting the right guys - McParland, Borrell and Segura - to run the program. The bulk of the work in identifying, bringing in and nurturing the talents we have now need to be credited to the team of guys he brought in.
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I think he obviously deserves a lot of credit for having the vision and force of personality to plan a solution and see it through, but I think to some extent it's similar to Houllier getting all the credit for 'saving the club' from a lack of professionalism. In both cases the really egregious aspect was that things were being done so badly in the first place.
 
It's stupid to suggest that we could have carried on the way we were. It's thanks to Rafa that we can attract alot of these young Spanish lads, we'll benefit from that for a long time. He did squander alot of money on too many players, like he was basically trying to block the academy route off, but I think it raised the quality ultimately, if not directly - surely alot of the young UK lads must have benefited from playing alongside foreign youngsters, and vice versa.
 
True Benitez helped raise the bar and put some pressure on the local lads who were already here.
It's interesting though, that Kelly, a local lad was the one who stepped up.
 
IMO Rafa was just trying to make a point and hoping that doing so would give him the capital to be able to insist on the changes he had planned. It was pretty aggressive but I think most observers would conclude that it was more right than wrong, particularly given that two or three decent players emerged to repay the investment.
 
Thankfully, the set up looks good now after tweaks over the years (Hughie McAuley, Piet Hamberg, John McMahon, Malcolm Elias etc). Frank McParland's return in 2009 looks like a good move too.
 
Incidentally, seeing as this is turning into a general discussion, is there some compelling reason the old thread was locked? Too big or something? Cos one of the few good threads on RAWK is their youth one and that's been going years.
 
peterhague said:
Incidentally, seeing as this is turning into a general discussion, is there some compelling reason the old thread was locked? Too big or something? Cos one of the few good threads on RAWK is their youth one and that's been going years.
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Start a new one for this year ... That other one should be vault material tbf
 
studsup said:
I feel Benitez often gets incorrectly credited for the work with/of the academy. IMO, he should get the credit for having the vision of what it should be like and how it should be run, and then getting the right guys - McParland, Borrell and Segura - to run the program. The bulk of the work in identifying, bringing in and nurturing the talents we have now need to be credited to the team of guys he brought in.
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I would think this is self evident, but it's not.
 
Credit to Rafa for initiating the process. But big kudos to McParland, Borrell, Segura, King Kenny for continuously working on the youth team even when the club was in tatters.

Our youth setup is starting to get noticed. With the reputation we are building it is going to get easier to recruit top young talent.
 
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