Nottingham Forest Academy And Under 21's

[stirred]

Was one of my criticisms of Karanka that he ignored the youth. So long as there is potential and good attitude there then a good manager should start getting them involved and contributing to the first team. I don't expect Yates to keep that level up but it shows what we were ignoring. Do your homework, identify quality and integrate the youth with them. Instead we bought ageing and injury prone 'meh' in quantity. Is it too simplistic to look at Liverpool who brought in quality in Van Dyck while integrating Gomes and Trent-Arnold while they're challenging for the Premier League and European cup? If they can do that then you can do it in the Championship, and other clubs are. Norwich's first team when they destroyed Leeds the other night cost about £6mio, partly cos of good recruitment and partly because they're integrating their youth.

I know people will say that those managers had time, but that excuse doesn't wash with me. EM is a businessman, and a very successful one. I find it hard to believe that if you're demonstrating progress to an owner, developing playing and financial assets that is putting his club in a stronger position that he'll get rid. If you adopt an approach with unsustainable expenditure with no re-sale value then your strategy has only a narrow window, so if you're only making slow / insufficient progress then of course you're going to get canned.

So I'm really pleased to see the youth given a chance, not only from a idealistic point of view but from a financial sustainability point of view too. Hopefully we'll get a look at Appiah soon too!