By Deep Blue
January 29 2006

In the past few years you could help but hear and read the platitudes to the "youth team" of wengers that is played in the cups and capable of "doing well, if they were played in the league" The future is bright for them, as they get older they will surely developed into a group of players that will make the man u side of becks et al look well rubbish init..

balderdash, with each successive year they look more and more "average" for their age, if they are to form the core of the scum side for years then midtable beckons.

Potential has to be realised and the fact is that 99% of hot prospects never develop further than their talents at 18

develop for most players depends on getting experience in the league and without this their development will always be stunted and will ultimately end up 23 years old and not good enough to start and to old to keep in the reserves as a "hot prospect"

I am sure a few will make the step up from the also rans into the squad, but most people can now see that the majority will fall by the wayside

To relate this to spurs in more than just a "lets laugh at the gooners" way is to look at our current crop of "prospects"

Mark Yeats, marney, Bernard, davenport, Kelly, huddlestone, Ziegler, Lennon, ifil etc will never make the grade if they don’t get to wet there feet in the league.

They need to know what it takes at that level and of equal importance they need to feel that they are trusted to play at that level

marney,kelly, ifil and zeigler had their little stints as lennon is now (yeates sniff hardly counts) and 3 of those 5 had now been sent off on loan and may never come back

huddlestone and davenport have never made the 1st team and have instead only be on loan to other teams

Are we going down the same route as arsenal? Is this something to worry about? how can we ever know if players will make the step up if by the age of 20-23 all they have ever done is sit in the reserves (Bernard?)

Of course we can’t pander to all hot talent, but perhaps a more determined effort to "blood" the youngsters, perhaps a more "eggs in one basket" approach is needed, skim the cream off and blood them in the side, give them the encouragement and more one to one attention needed to develop

Should we now look to have a bench of 18-23 year olds, with a "if you can’t make it by then you aren’t good enough" outlook on the reserves.

Youngsters who come in or make the step up from our youth set ups will know they [b]will[/b] make an appearance in the 1st team at some point and if the don’t swim when chucked in at the deep end they are out

yes we will lose some talent who down the line might end up ok (young) but the cutthroat approach will leave us with only the hard core with the mental strength to take the pressure when its heaped on and they will also be the best suited to taking their chances when they come along

Or we could just hug them all and tell them they are all good...