The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed the section “Academy news” appear on the ClaretandHugh header as we approach the new season.
And this reflects the growing importance of the academy to the club with prospects such as Declan Rice, Josh Cullen, Nathan Holland, Reece Burke, Quina and the other lads making their advance on the first team squad.
The Under 23 team landed promotion to Premier League Two Division One last season in a thrilling play-off at Newcastle and this season will be mixing it with the likes of a Chelsea, Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City and the rest.
These are exciting times for the lads and the club as Academy boss Terry Westley oversees a group of youngsters who could end the long drought of home grown first teamers.
Terry told us: “They are enjoying their football and are in a good place at the moment. We all want to see our boys break through. We are all working at it very hard indeed.”
CandH will be bringing you team news and interviews during the course of the season as the lads kick off on one of the Academy’s most important seasons in a long time.
Certainly the academy is the strongest since the days of Carrick and Cole although I wouldn’t put it at that level there are some that if they do kick on could be good, the likes of Oxford and Holland, maybe Quina, Cullen and Martinez also, if we can continue to grow it and hopefully have a successful u23 side like all the other big clubs, if kids do make it through from our u23’s into the first team probably a lot of kids at the better academies might see us as a great option to break through, when you look at Chelsea and City in particular they have an abundance of youth talent with very little prospect of establishing themselves in the first team because of the way their clubs do business.
So talking of the young players, whet the hell has happened to Martin Samuelson. A fantastic prospect that looks so comfortable on the ball. I thought he was close to breaking into he first team yet he wasn’t even included in the pre-season tour squad. Has he been loaned out already?
He is still with us currently Injured tho.
Yes we have great squad of Youngsters what drives me mad is Slav did not go to a single PL2 games last season or since he has been here.
Which to me seeing your club manager would help with confidence. Quina does seem to be on his Radar and I hope to see him and Rice in squad next season. Quina was on bench 15 times would like to are both play. And if we don’t buy a CB with only 4 and 2 33 other 2 Injury prime we will need Rice and he will need to be given a shot.
Him and Burke both looked like proper centre halves in preseason games. Tho Burke is most likely to go on Loan to Bolton with Cullen possibly too which If they go to any championship club that will be the best bc both played under Parky at Bradford and Cullen won lots of awards.
I would Honestly like Cullen to have a shot.
And Holland as looked great in preseason fearless taking on players making good runs. I expect good things from all of them. And Contrary to what Gold and Sully say I think our Academy is very important and just signed 16 year old Alese who was wanted by City and Liverpool so hopefully over next few years we will put out players like we use to.
Tomkins is the last Academy player to play league football.
It’s been disappointing to see so many of our young players moved on over the past six or seven years. One player that should not have been sold is Junior Stanislas……It’s good to see him back in the Prem with Bournemouth. Others like Freddie Sears, Jordan Spence, Dan Potts, Robert Hall and Zavon Hines are still plying their trade in the lower divisions.
Your right. I forgot about Junior and he had a great season for Bournemouth last year.
2 in top league at 27.
I do hope some.of the lads get a shot this year in the league cup early on. Especially Rice bc Burke still looks set on Loan and we need CB cover.