Nuno Espirito Santo

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Yes fair enough Sniffer, obviously the Mendes stable does its own scouting, they must all have something about them to join. My point was that I prefer us to to our own homework too about the type of player we need and whether they fit the club. Not suggesting we don’t do that as well but you have to admit we have had some pretty random choices rock up here in the last 6 years. I also don’t want us to set our scope so narrow that we only recruit from one pool, I hope Syrianos is still involved with his knowledge of Germany for example.
Final point, we have a Category 1 academy but I remain worried that the constant influx of players reduces opportunities for us to develop the next Johnson. Cooper was heavily involved with the academy, my concern with Nuno is that certainly at Wolves he reportedly never even watched their academy teams. I hope there is still a way for our homegrown talent to get to the first team. Classic example of this, MGW leaving Wolves because of lack of first team opportunities there, admittedly he was a lot younger and more raw when Nuno was there but you get the point.

I don't know the actual answers to these questions but:

1. How many academy players did Cooper give a debut to in his time here? Bearing in mind that his tenure was certainly a lot higher than the average manager, and
2. I had read that Nuno likes a smaller squad and, as a result, and particularly at Wolves this led to him giving homegrown talent. Is that not true?

In view of the above then it suggests to me that Nuno is more likely, based on facts, to give homegrown talent an opportunity?

I know some will argue that it has been forced on him but got to give Nuno credit for giving some of these youngsters a chance, not many get to play in the 4th round of the FA Cup at that age.