Martin Sherif signs his first professional contract

Very interesting that we've turned his life upside down to come develop with us.

Hopefully he turns out to be the real deal and everyone benefits.

Good luck chap.

Hopefully you will develop into a great player and we will get into our first team in a year or two.

If not then wish you a long and successful career wherever you play.

COYB

Let's hope more new faces sign for us this month. The reality is that they will most likely be loanees or Bosmans.

Sherif had some impressive instincts in his movement from my limited viewing. For a young lad, he seemed to know when to go and when to hold positions to create space for a dribbler or an angle for the pass. I am in that posse!

They tied him up in a tent and let his horse free

Later that evening the horse entered the tent when no one was watching, the sheriff whispered something in its ear

Later that night the horse came back with a young lady on its back, she spent the night with the sheriff and left before sunrise

The next evening the horse came back to its master tent and had orders whispered to its ear, and came back late in night with another young lady who entertained the sheriff and left before the kidnappers could notice anything

The third night the sheriff whispered to the horse: "Listen, fucking Dobbin; I said bring POSSE!"

And as Paul Kossoff and Back Street Crawler sang "You'll Never Take Me Alive"

"We have to remember that Ellis Simms was building a similar reputation" — him and how many others?

I remember Kieran Agard was the Under-21 (or U23) player of the year. Never got a sniff of first team.

McAleny, Chris Long, Dobbin, Jevons, Hornby, Mampala, Evans, Sambou, Lavery, Chadwick, Dave Hickson. How many of them made it?

And as far as Everton goes we must remember, it's a long way down to the top.

Seriously unpopular opinion here but your list reinforces my belief that unless our youngsters are in the first team by 19 or 20 at the very latest, they are very, very unlikely to make it with us.

Cannon at 20 might still stand a chance after his excellent loan spell at Preston. Unfortunately, time is probably already up for Warrington, Dobbin, Onyango and others and it's crunch time for Welch, Mills, Whitaker and Kouyate to break through at either Championship or youth international level or both.

But really, we're probably now looking to the younger group of Metcalfe, Okoronkwo, Sherif, Djankpata and Samuels-Smith for our most likely first teamer to graduate from the academy.

These kids can still have really good careers at a high standard – just probably not with a Premier League side (or not without a few years in the lower leagues at any rate).

Don't forget Scott Spencer and Lukas Jutkiewicz…

Peak age is generally 24 to 28, and just 5 minutes on Google will give you a very long list of late bloomers who didn't break through until similar ages.

Every time I hear it, I see Hansen sitting there smuggly saying “You win nothing with kids.”

Apparently thieves and vagabonds had kidnapped her from the village, beating her husband and roughing her up before escaping to the forest and tying her up. Dave was shocked to discover she was intended as a victim of their depravity once they returned from ransacking the monastery a few miles away.

The shapely, doe eyed beauty looked up at Dave pleading "Please help me, I don't think I can take anymore".

And Dave, captivated by the young lady's predicament and timeless beauty, dutifully looked around to ensure the ne'er do wells were not about then gently moved toward her whispering "It's just not your lucky day, is it, love."

Of course the poor old Sheriff got pilloried for Dave's shenanigans by association, proving the old adage you can choose your friends but not your family.

The list is something like Kane, Foden, Grealish, Livramento, Chilwell, Lamptey, Rashford, McTominay, Shaw, Wan Bissaka, Gallagher, Broja, Guehi, Mount, James, Saka, Rowe-Smith, Gordon, Mitchell, Ramsey, Rice, Gibbs-White, Alexander-Arnold and Jones. This year's graduates include Palmer, Lewis (both City) and Hall (Chelsea).

Pleasingly, the likes of Vardy, Toney, Wilson, Bowen and many others have worked their way up from the lower leagues – which is what some of our graduates might also do. The point is that, past the age of 19 or 20, the chances of making it straight into a Premier League first team absolutely plummet.

Someone asked "How do we get to Nottingham Forest?" and when the policeman said he was not sure, right away from the back came: "No Wonder you can't catch Robin Hood."

Something that just stuck in my mind when we play Forest, It is the same as when we played them at Goodison. I believe we got 5 goals and the headline in the Pink Echo was Everton run Rings around Forest at Muddison Park that was a reference to T Ring the left winger.

Lotsa pun today.

What we need to do better is help them to be the best they can be by not keeping them in the stasis of the U21s for too long. And make decent money off the ones who have some talent.

I like Sherif. Him and Okoronkwo should be a handful and hopefully get decent loans sooner rather than later.

Getting £6-8M for Simms is good business. Letting Lewis Gibson and Isaac Price leave for nothing is not such good business.

(Molten) Gold.

Mike (31) Hope you're in rude health mate, but I thought as a Yew Ess male you would have known that Dylan wrote the song. he even had a Cameo part in the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, where the song aired.

Happy July the 4th pal, when we gained independence from you and American history started!!

I think it was Bob Marley who wrote the song, actually, and Eric Clapton did a famous cover version. Don't think it ever had anything to do with Bob Dylan…

Maybe the fact that Clapton also did a cover of Dylan's Knocking on Heaven's Door has you confused?

Look at what the other lot have had come through the ranks and that tells you it all.

Ken Dodd the dastardly sheriff of Knotty Ash was the perp.
She is now ensconced in the butty mines.

And we Colonies miss you lot desperately and still hope to get back together with you someday. We're fading fast without you.

What about Hibbert, Osman, Stones, Barkley, Rodwell, Anichebe, Gosling?

And there's a raft of other ex-academy players having good careers at other EPL and Championship clubs.

Good luck to the lad but any chance of signing somebody who just might help us stay in the league?

From what I can understand from what Martin has just described, so far so good.

On the academy in general, it has underperformed, but then consider it takes years to bring players through. So even if we've overhauled it now, it will take years to see the benefits. And even then, the percentage rate is low and those who look promising at 16 will rarely make it at the club they have been at since 10 years old.

You just hope they can go on to have a career in the game.

I won't bang on about old debates, but I would scrap the academy system. I don't like or agree with it in the context of the current English system.

Talk of Nottingham got me reminiscing. I've been there a few times and not always a happy hunting ground. In the 80s climbing up the old school floodlight framework in the uncovered away section to get a better view. Sat with a Forest friend and a fellow Evertonian in the main stand amongst the Forest supporters. I think Duncan Ferguson scored.

Put him on the first-team bench in friendlies and give him a few runs out. Rooney played at 16 or 17 I think. Surely a Sheriff can shoot and hit the target a lot.

Rooney helped the second biggest curse in our history stay in charge, whilst changing the narrative.

Rodwell's money came in very handy and we would have got a lot more for Ross Barkley if he hadn't been injured and worked the head so well. (Imo)

The sale of Anthony Gordon might have also kept the wolves from the door, although the October enquiry should tell us more?

Players who have come through the Everton academy have arguably saved the club when it has been in real financial dire straits on more than one occasion and it's time Everton really started concentrating on making their academy a place where the very best talented young footballers want to go.

It won't be easy but I'm sure everyone would be doing it if it was!

Stones came from Barnsley followed not long after by Holgate.

I think you are getting Dominic mixed up with Stones.
Dom was from Sheffield Utd and Stones from Barnsley.

To compare us to clubs with limitless wealth who buy every teenager under the sun and give their parents houses and sports cars is harsh though?!

The reality is all clubs take hundreds of players on through the age groups and less than 1% make the grade.

Being Player of the Season at Under-18s very rarely equals distinguished Premier League career.

And the comment about Isaac Price is also harsh. He was offered a very generous contract reflective of how the club viewed him in terms of progression but he didn't see a pathway to the first eleven so chose to run his contract down and leave for Liege. However we are due a half-decent development fee.

There was literally no more the club could have done. They couldn't offer him guarantees about playing time and he wanted to start. No other Premier League team came in for him. That's why he's at Liege. Fair play to him for making a brave decision.

If we could do anything better, it's use the loan system to develop players. Which we have got much better at in the last few seasons.

Tom Davies never kicked on because he never had a Championship loan. He wasn't quite good enough so stayed on the bench a lot. Had he had a look, he could have kicked on or proved his worth at a lower level and gone for a fee – which is what has worked for Simms and Nkounkou last season is working for Cannon.

The likes of Mills and Warrington are not considered ready yet. James Vaughan is tasked with finding them suitable loans but we may have to keep one or both if we don't get bodies in. If we have to keep them, they warm the bench like Davies and don't kick on. The cycle continues.

But to be clear, the club don't consider either ready for the first team. Neither have even played a game at Championship level yet. So sometimes eagerness to throw them in is at odds with the reality.

They might have the same problem with II Smith, one of the best young talents on the books who still hasn't signed his first professional contract with Man Utd and Man City hovering in the background waiting to swoop.

The Academy has proved its worth financially in the past. I think it now needs restructuring with new coaches with new ideas being brought into the club.

I very rarely get excited watching Everton's young sides, never mind the first team, they all seem to play the same way with backwards the main route, although Dyche made a difference with the first team when he came in.

You mean there is someone worse than Chairman Bill?

Apart from the two World Wars, which altered our progress both times, I can't think of a bigger disaster than that phoney.

There's quite a few clubs around Europe (not England though) who do very well with their academies but don't have access to vast wealth – Rennes, Lyon in France, various clubs in the Netherlands etc.

Better use of the loan system will help us – but loans don't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

The bigger issue is the quality. If you look at the England youth teams you can see that very, very few of our prospects are rated highly.

My gripe is the innovation and development of particular positions. We produce a lot of Tom Davies types that work hard and pass it square. We don't produce or develop the players that unlock defences.

We should produce full-backs as a bare minimum from the academy. Lessons should have been learned from the Baines and Jagielka re-signings.

When was the last time we produced a homegrown left-midfielder or striker?

I know we are 4th choice in the local area for attracting talent but you can't tell me with a population of near 500k in a footballing mad city that we can't find left-footers or strikers.

They are there, scouts need to do their jobs and coaches need to develop talent not just buy cast-offs or free transfers from other clubs.

Case in point: we bring Sherif over from Holland when he was 14. I don't even think that should be legal but that's another matter.

He will get more opportunities than local lads as he was bought in. The local lads go down the pyramid and find football being a very different game from the elite academy version.

Personally, I would like to see the club buck the trend and field as many locals as possible to install some pride back into the club. Hanging around the bottom of the league being cannon fodder for most teams is a far cry from the '80s.

Somebody earlier stated that, unlike other clubs, we can't afford to offer their parents jobs, houses and sports cars but I wonder what it took to lure a 13-year-old from Holland?

And come to that, haven't we had a couple of young American goalkeepers and at least one kid from Australia who ended up at Roma? It's not like we promised their mothers that we'd look after them.

Even the ones deemed not good enough were sold on for a lot of money. Other clubs have now realised that the Chelsea model has been adopted by other top teams. So we have to try and produce our own or bring in kids not deemed good enough by the top teams, and hope we can develop them.

I fundamentally disagree with kids being in an academy under 15. I would much rather these kids enjoy playing with their friends, which will help them develop. I understand from some parents that, when your child has joined an academy, they are not allowed to play for their school teams – that is just wrong on so many levels.

I took a look at the Academy squads for 3 different years, 2013-14, 2016-17 and 2019-20 to see who subsequently broke through to the first team (I may have missed out one or two who appeared fleetingly in the squad):

Squad of Everton FC U18s – Season 2013-14

From 2013, the notables were Davies and Dowell. I think Jonjoe Kenny also arrived that year.

Squad of Everton FC U18s – Season 2016-17

From 2016, the three I see are Baningime, Simms and most notably, Gordon.

Squad of Everton FC U18s – Season 2019-20

No-one here has truly broken through though it includes some of the names mentioned above. Is this any good?

I checked the Chelsea Academy for the same 3 years. This yielded Andreas Christensen, Tomori, Loftus-Cheek, Solanke, Chalobah, Reece James, Conor Gallagher, Mason Mount, Hudson Odoi and, from the most recent 2019-20 crop, Broja, Livramento and Levi Colwill. I suppose the comparison is a little unfair but there's no question which is the better crop and by some distance.

The only way to stop this is to get rid of the deadbeats still in charge and still ruining the club and taking us all for mugs and alter the whole philosophy at the club by showing ambition and backbone and demanding the kind of professional standards and expectations that were thrown in the bin decades ago.

I still see not a single sign of this.

Moshiri and Kenweight seem determined to kill Everton FC in spite of the fans.

This relies on a mix of international scouting and locally based youth development. The point is to bypass the ridiculously overheated transfer market which only a few clubs can now really afford to participate in.

If we do go down this path, I hope that a real focus is placed on our academy (or whatever version of youth development we deploy) and our roots in the North-West where I believe there is bags of raw talent.

I'm arguing with a couple of them on WhatsApp now, and they are not going to like it one bit if the present conversation keeps going down a certain road because my next step is to compare the actions of Peter Robinson after Heysel to those of that horrible bastard Thatcher after Hillsborough. The only difference imo, is that Thatcher had a lot more power.

Although I'm pretty much on the same lines with you, Brian H, regarding academies, I would start them once a child hit age 12. I'm not saying I'm right, but I definitely don't believe in kids still attending junior school and going through this present system.

So the real question is how to bridge that gap and keep the kids motivated and on board.

Well, Michael Kenrick is not going to like this but there didn't seem to be any problem with the gap between The Central League and first team football not too long ago.

So are we any worse than most other clubs? We certainly have quite a few ex Academy lads spread throughout the different leagues. We do something right.

Chelsea, in their own inimitable way, hoovered up the best talent from over the globe, developed them and then sold them off at considerable profit when they couldn't quite consistently hack it at first-team level. I believe Man City may be doing likewise these days.

I don't think you can expect Everton to compete with such high-quality production lines.

More generally, I believe young lads should probably go nowhere near Academies until they are 15 or 16.

When they do play there, the emphasis is on keeping possession. No wonder there are few if any Rooney's being produced – street footballers as I would call them, players who operate on instinct rather than instruction. Academies produce robots and stifle individuality.

Why not??

The Central League (as such) was on the way out by the time I first started to document the 'Reserves' here on ToffeeWeb. The first full season of match details that I could find was in Pontin's Premier Division, 1996-97.

What's striking is how many of those names on each teamsheet are still so familiar – after 26 years. (I know that's just a blink of an eye on your geologic timeline!)

From the first game: Gerrard, Hottiger, Allen, N Moore, Ball, Limpar, Samways, McCann, Holcroft, Branch, Rideout.

But by the last game, many of those more familiar names had gone, and we were into a more contemporary pattern of fringe players who would not make the grade and not make much of a dent in addled memories like mine:

Gerrard, Lane, Hussin, Poppleton, O'Connor, A Eaton, Tynan, McCann, Cadamarteri, Townsend, Price.

An injury ended his career but to his credit he instantly opened a youth academy in Lytham in conjunction with ex-Toffees Jamie Milligan and John Hills.

It's pathetic to me we don't have the balls and vision to try to go big with the academy side. Ajax, Leipzig, Dortmond, most of the French, Stuttgard, Sporting… all manage it without Oil money and all without starting history like ours.

If our current owners (and incoming shareholders) can put £1bn in for a stadium that'll offer an ROI of 5% ish, why not invest £50M on academy academy where one Jude Bellingham would offer 200%?

Indeed, I'd argue we can't afford not to. A little vision (Data science, AI, recruiting university grads with sports at heart and brains the size of Wisconsin before they end up on dead-end sales jobs) could go a long way.

I've asked many top pros "Were you the best as a kid?" and to a man they all recall a lad in the neighbourhood who was better but just didn't work at it.

I think that's the question – are todays ex-pros capable of getting into the head of good young players to educate them about the nuances of the game?

Seems to me most are as thick as two short planks, getting by on the old boy network and the laddish culture therein. If you don't fit into that pissed-up arsehole culture, you don't get on.

It doesn't surprise me one jot we don't produce top-drawer technical footballers in this country and have to buy in skill from abroad.

Let's face it, we don't have the foresight at Everton. We had a CEO with no footballing prowess who left having watched us decline during her tenure followed by Cheek and Chong, a man with no footballing prowess. We had Marcel Brands who said "It stinks here, I'm off!"

We have a chairman with a proven limited footballing prowess and an owner who doesn't even know what the word Subutteo means, has no clue what NSNO means and thinks Dixie Dean was a Liverpool jazz quartet.

I agree with everything you say. It aint going to happen at Everton. Billy Smart had less clowns than we have.

We still haven't heard from "Sharpy" since he slid away, funny that.

I don't understand how RB Leipzig, Dortmund etc manage to consistently find such gems. Do they buy raw talent from other clubs, develop and sell them like Brighton do? If so, I agree that's a model we should follow but that's not necessarily an Academy-based model. I could be wrong. I don't claim to be an expert.

However, if it is as easy as you suggest to invest in an Academy and roll off some gems, how come Liverpool have only really produced Alexander-Arnold since Gerrard came through?

I think you are incorrect with the assertion in your final sentence. The top academies are producing some of the best in Europe. The import of foreign coaches and foreign players has helped in that regard.

Also, good coaching can make a difference. You only have to look at the impact Guardiola has made on Stones, Walker and Grealish – to name but three.

U21s Squad: is just for pre-men's football only. These are players under 21 who don't have scouts calling the club to take them for a loan for a year... so stay and play in the U21s league.

U21s Experienced: The aim is to fill this category. These are players who have played professional-level football. The club needs to bring in more players who are 18 or 19 who've played a few games at professional level, whether it's League One or Two, or abroad. It's the best acid test of how they fare in the men's game when the mental and physical pressure is on.

Also, the club needs to find a way to get U21s squad players out and play competitive football. None should sit on the first team bench because they are better than the rest of the U21s Squad. They can't develop on the bench.

If they are that good at 18 or 19, why not let them go to the Championship for a year or France or Belgium or Germany for example?

Only exceptional players who are so good the manager will keep playing them in the first team should stay in the first team squad. Rooney is an example. Osman, Gordon and Simms... when they came back from loans found the loans helped to bridge the gap that Rooney didn't need.

Grealish, despite what people say, hasn't improved since he signed for Man City. He's a one-trick pony whose lack of technical ability is covered by the coach playing him on the opposite wing.

His so-called brilliant play is getting the ball, running a few yards with it, then stopping and either cutting inside and passing or playing a pass backwards.

If he was that good, he would be on his favoured foot on the right wing, especially with Haaland in the middle. Walker was always a good full-back. I rate Stirling a better player than Grealish.

Curtis Jones and Alexandr-Arnold alone likely paid for the last 10 years. Bajcetic, Doak and Elliot don't look too shabby either.

CBA to Google but £10 to charity says they've produced a long list of players who've sold for decent money at some stage.

What top academies?

And what has he done with Stones et al? Think he plays Stones in midfield doesn't he? Every man and his dog suggested that on here.

If it were left to you or I, we might invest in the youth… but we have no say on the matter!!!

We are run by amateurs, that's why I'm telling you, it's not going to happen at our club. We are run by amateurs.

If you include Elliot as an example of Liverpool's successful approach to an Academy (he came up through Fulham's academy, by the way), then I could counter that by saying we made excellent money from Lukaku, Stones and Lookman.

Buying hungry, young players who have broken into other teams already is not the same as developing your own homegrown players to reach the first-team squad. The first is transfer policy, the second is Academy policy.

The biggest problem at Everton has been instability. Waldron who was successful in his head of academy roll but was sacked for misdemeanors that might have just ordinarily brought about a suspension if Marcel Brands hadn't just come in, and everyone thought he was going to revamp everything.

Brands wasn't a success and, although it looked from the outside that Unsworth had a lot of power (which should have brought about stability), the constant chopping and changing of managers has just led to a lot of instability right throughout the football club.

We have been run by amateurs or people without a real plan for years now but this city has historically always been hotbed full of talent and Everton seem to have stopped trying to utilize this for quite a while now, imo.

I might have written this before but, after Luton beat Sunderland in the playoffs, I remember reading what the Luton captain said after the game:

"It was a war out there tonight, it was absolutely brutal," he said, and my first thought after reading this was that there's a lot of good things about academy football but they don't teach young players enough about the absolute brutality that is hard-nosed professional football.

With enough dedication, desire and real willpower, I'm absolutely certain Everton could become one of the best academies in this country, especially if they could add some innovation to find a way to make this happen.

I was reading a very interesting article the other day about Harry Kane's loan spells, the first one was at Leyton Orient at 17 or 18. It was a kind of hybrid arrangement were Kane often went back to train with the Tottenham kids, maybe getting the technical support, then getting games for Orient too, but not playing all of them.

It was an introduction to the brutality as you put it, and to the real world. His coaches there said he knuckled down and adjusted his game to deal with it. From an early age learning to drop away deeper from the centre-back and get his timing right.

It made me think about our kids and whether this kind of, still plugged into Everton, approach maybe more beneficial to get scheduled technical training with the first team. Rather than be cast adrift for a year and pick up bad habits.

Had we chosen to invest heavily in the academy when Moshiri came on board, we might be reaping the rewards now. What would the cost of a Bolasie or a Schneiderlin have done if applied to youth development instead?

There are all sorts of reasons against this approach too, but I'm sure there were when Ajax chose to go down that path, or Lyon etc. It doesn't even need to be that innovative as it's not like the Ajax operation is a closely guarded secret.

Got chatting to a couple, the man reluctantly professed to be a scout for a local club and just happened to be watching this game. Didn't believe him, he was too focused on one young lad who was about 16 and was just brilliant, really.

I didn't see the whole game but the lad had strength and stamina, up against some pretty hard-nosed West Cheshire League players. Anyway I said the lad was very good to him and he agreed but said he was too old to coach in the discipline needed for a professional club, despite his obvious talent.

I thought then, still do, that there is, or was, a bucket load of talented players that never get the chance to live a dream, yet the big clubs churn talent with so few players actually making a living from football.

I wonder what the spread of talent across all the professional leagues looks like, how many players come from academies and how many are scouted from outside. I wonder too how much that's changed.

Today, we have players from all over the world playing for clubs. I would bet most didn't come through academies but are still making it in the Premier League, so I guess my question would have to be: Is the whole setup worth it?

At the Premier League level, the stakes are so high, managers feel they cannot afford to take risks of playing youngsters, especially if the club is fighting relegation or for trophies, so they end up farmed out on loan or let go because they are not ready.

There has to be a better model that doesn't ignore older teens and men in the lower leagues and amatuer leagues, who frankly with some good trading and coaching, are equally as good as some of the players traded for millions. So if that's true, how do we target and find them?

I do feel now it's a pool of talent that's pretty much ignored. In our financial position, surely everything would be on the table, are we even looking locally anymore?

I've mentioned Steven Pienaar, quite a few times on these pages, with reference to coaching young footballers, because he was possibly the best Everton player I've witnessed, at finding those little pockets, and taking defenders where they don't really want to go, simply by constantly coming towards the ball. How else could someone who was neither quick, or more than nine stone ringing wet, have done so well playing in the ultra physical EPL?

It's all about opinions obviously, but when I watch a lot of academy football, it seems to mostly come from the same pamphlet, and the biggest thing it seems to want to produce, is safety first footballers.

Possession is nine tenths of the law, and it's possibly why that scout said that kid was too late to make the grade, Christine? They seem to want to mound young players very early nowadays, so it was good for Ian Woan, that Brian Clough, never had such preconceived ideas. Clough didn't need any coaching badges either!

The two best scouse footballers of our generation, were Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerard, imo. Great players, both won games for their teams by having great desire and massive hearts, just as much as having great ability, and I bet you one of the reasons for this is because they both played kids football, on the local park, until they went into senior school?

I might be wrong, but I believe if you try and take away the rawness out of anyone to early in sport, then I also believe you start to take away that horrible but very real, natural competitive edge. The stuff that comes very natural, to most born winners?

Compare that to what has come through the Ajax academy in the same timescale (comprised largely of kids from a 30 mile radius of the stadium) and you get a picture of, in my view, two clubs completely letting down their communities.

Compare that also to what Manchester City are doing - where in just a few years they have produced Foden, McAtee, Edozie, Doyle, Palmer, Charles, Lewis, Harwood-Bellis, Doyle, Trafford and Bazunu. All these kids are first team quality players - and 5 or 6 would be nailed on starters for us now.

They are doing this, not by sending kids out to play in parks to figure it out by themselves, but by coaching them properly from a young age. I'm afraid much of the UK experience of coaching is so bad, people can't get their heads round the idea that it could benefit young kids.

This not how it's seen in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and now Manchester City and Chelsea. The sooner we take academy football seriously and invest in it as a club, the sooner we'll see the fruits of it on the pitch.

And at the same time, we are not in the position to play even one inexperienced player because the other 10 can cover.

How do we attract those character traits to run the club and academy.

We have local universities running wide ranging sports degrees why aren't we tapping into that area.

Doing what other clubs do isn't good enough without billions. We need to approach things differently.

The culture at the top also needs changing big time but we all know that.

Growing up, long ago, every kid who played football on the streets, tenements and ollers around Liverpool and I bet most towns and cities played because they just loved playing the best game there is to play.

We played from morning to night, couldn't get enough of it, because we loved it and you learned as you went along, every aspect of the game, the bullies and cheats you learned to avoid or give it back to them, Rooney played in the streets as well as local teams and I bet he learned as much in those places, possibly more, as when he joined Everton.

Watching Everton's Academy teams these last few years is mostly boring watching regimental teams with very little individual traits being shown or allowed to be shown, they seem to be frowned upon.

Going back years ago t was a pleasure to watch Everton's youth teams and reserve teams play with decent attendances allowed in most parts of the ground, now you get crowds of a few hundred all in the one stand, mostly all cold and bored stiff.

Point taken about Rooney, he is once in a generation. But I posted earlier comparing us to Chelsea. I realise that is a high bar but we should surely be aiming for half or two thirds their success rate and we're nowhere near. Forgetting the earlier years I linked to in that post, a more recent year, 2019/20 yielded Broja, Colwill and Livramento. All 3 would be strong candidates for our first team. Our own crop from that year are far behind.

In doing my research, I came across an analysis of UK academies. This isn't official, apparently audited data is not released, but it is indicative. Surprisingly we are a Tier 1 academy and ranked usually 6-8. This is in relation to players active in the PL and EFL and which academy they started in. But it appears our ranking is mainly down to our being a good source of players for the Championship, League 1 and League 2. Good for the players, not so useful for us.

What do you replace it with?

Bad / mediocre academies are no replacement for this. Maybe they aren't even worth bothering with.
Good academies are.

Look at the output from good academies - it is outstanding. Good coaching can replace street football - as demonstrated by the output at Ajax, Lyon, Rennes, PSV, Real, Barca, City and Chelsea etc etc. The South American academies too (it's a myth that their kids are still learning their skills in favelas).

I see no lack of will to win, improvisation etc etc from the likes of Bergkamp, Robben, Schneider, Stam, Davids, Seedorf etc who all came through academy football in the Netherlands - or from the likes of Iniesta, Xavi and Busquets in Spain.

The trouble is, many people just cannot see how we could possibly have an academy that produces this sort of player. If Ajax has taken that view many years ago, they'd probably have a few Barkleys or Gordons turning up now again too - with the odd wordly like Rooney every 50 years.

Xavi, Iniesta et al are not being recreated they were a product of their time as the Utd team of Scholes, Giggs etc were. Coaching might hone existing skill in the right hands but it doesn't create it. And uk coaching is attracted to the lowest common denominator, physicality, hence our international sides never win a bean.

Today kids are picked and taken to these Academies at the age of five with the smallest sign of ability, not to help the kids but to get their hands on them before other clubs do.

Hundreds are picked then dropped off just as quickly.

Academies can be a place of learning and very beneficial to both clubs and the young lads who go there as long as the right coaches are there to teach them, any young lad who had a coach such as Colin Harvey were very lucky, they would have learned and prospered under coaches like that as long as they were talented and willing to learn.

In Australia some years ago, a successful local player turned pundit promoted the idea that the British coaches, who predominated, should be replaced with Brazilian coaches as they concentrated more on individual skills whereas British coaches looked more to a team game. This argument was quickly put down when they looked at the matter of cost.

There does seem though to be a comparison with Finch Farm where most coaches are former Everton players and those not seem to be very short term. What was that coaches coach name, Nicholls, lasted about a month? Perhaps, given his age, it could be a supervisory role for someone like Colin Harvey while player recruitment comes under auspices of the DoF.

I've raised the idea before but perhaps clubs could look to have teams in local leagues such as the old Lancashire Combination or even of those clubs like Southport whose grounds are used by larger clubs until they became part of the Football League's top divisions, a sort of English "B" team system.

Whatever, there does seem to be a step missing in Everton's youth football education with so many looking promising until the final step up.

- Gavi
- Fati
- Balde
- Cucurella (Chelsea)
- Thiago (Liverpool)
- Morena (Villa)
- Martinez (Girona)
- Gomez (Man City)
- Deulofeu (Udinese)
- Traore (Wolves)
- Sanabria (Torino)
- Ruiz (Braga)
- Mir (Sevilla)
- Garcia
- Gonzalez
- Alena (Getafe)
- Bellerin (Sporting)
- Puig (LA Galaxy)
- Miranda (Betis)
- Mingueza (Celta Vigo)
- Moriba (Leipzig)
- Peres (Celta Vigo)

There's plenty more besides out there, too. Personally, I think that shows a pretty consistent output.

I was told that most academies in England get funding because they follow a certain programme that has been designed by the FA and I think anyone who was to watch a lot of academy football would be able to identify this pretty quickly.

There's very little innovation. I used to smile at one kid's grandad who used to stand by me and say, “I love watching my grandson play football but not in this environment though, Tony, because it's fucking boring!”

With me being a little bit deeper when it comes to football, I used to say “Billy, the sad thing is they are not being encouraged to play their own game at all, it genuinely feels like the coach is in an examination, such is the rigidity of these very boring systems.”

I might be wrong but I don't think Man City or Chelsea, have opted in to this programme of producing boring, rigid, robotic, safety-first footballers, Robert. I would bet that around 80% of coaches just do what they are told, leaving whatever innovation they might have at home.

It doesnt matter how much you coach them – if they don't possess those two attributes, they won't reach the very top.

It's a complicated subject what with age of players and what position they are best physically suited for etc.

You do need some level of coaching obviously, but top players' class is instantly recognizable.

Coaching is 100% needed at all levels.

At elite level, the ability and natural talent will already be there. You can coach a technique but can't coach a good first touch.

A good coach gets that extra yard, decision and effort from players. A well organised team of average players beats a disorganised team of superstars. You only have to look at what Brentford and Chelsea did last year to see that.

In our case we have a group of coaches at Finch farm that are probably more interested in their own short term goals and self preservation than developing talent.

"might not quite all be Champions League elite"

Which confirms my point that coaches can't magic up skill. If they could your statement wouldn't be necessary.

I think I get what Barry is alluding to but I always think that a good coach should be able to make every player who is genuinely interested in becoming a better footballer, a better footballer, even if they don't quite reach Champions League level!

My own view is that having good competition is one the best ways to help make anyone improve but I suppose it's just another contradiction (with regards my own personal views) because most academies should definitely give a kid much better competition than grass roots football. There's usually a contradiction in there somewhere!

But, this, "5 or 6 would be nailed on starters for us now."

C'mon now. No they wouldn't.

Could you imagine if this lot had come through our ranks though? Even without Foden this lot would solve the next five years of squad building.

For our present purposes, we don't need a crop of players fit for the Champions League elite (I'm not really sure what your point is there, Barry) – we need players who are genuine Premier League quality – about the standard of Garner, McNeil etc or better in some cases.

If Foden and others mentioned came through our Academy, they would be sure to be lured away by your 'limelight' clubs.

A number of coaches I worked with were always on my positioning as a defender when my team didn't have the ball especially from free-kicks and corners. They did also coach the not-so-legal way to tackle as well as the correct way.

There are a number of natural gifted players whose abilities to head, dribble and shoot come easy to them, but they still need coaching how they use it in a team environment.

Managers pick the team; coaches make sure the players are comfortable in the position they play within the team's tactics.