Pressing, Stamina, Spirit, Belief, Leadership

Parkinson made McArdle into that player as he was part of a defence which all suited each other, and Parkinson is a very good defensive coach. He’s not individually great. Hence why he’s at league one

 

I'd argue that the sentiment remains valid, but perhaps it should be expressed slightly differently: we need a McArdle type of CH. In the same way we could use a Bobby-type scorer, or a Beagrie-type winger, and so on. It's what they brought to the team that we could use. Sometimes, we can get that with the return of the specific player, e.g. Stuart second-time around, but that won't always work.

Following on from the point made above by @Damo, I wonder how McArdle would perform if, say, he were here (or anywhere, really) as part of a defensively-strong Parkinson-led side? The whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and all that...

RCB

 

Or in a few others opinions Edin was a good Director of football..................you know who you are.

 

i found it interesting that only a day or so after our academy was named the best category 3 academy in the north of the country that mckeown was on the radio saying how we need to improve our youth structure because at the moment it is awful. i don’t think the T&A ran a story on it either.

 

Who's McKeown what position within the club does he hold.
Like others have said it's OK having a good academy but we need to see them coming through to either sell on or be pushing for a first team place.

 

but that’s not going to happen overnight, foundations have to be put in place where we’ll see the benefits in a few years. i don’t remember the youth system ever winning any accolades before, so obviously something has been done right in the last 2-3 years to have improved it.

anybody checked on ricc after yesterday?

 

Haven't we always had an academy team, bringing through the likes of Delph, Cleverly, Wisdom, McBurnie, ETC.
What I will say with regards credit to Edin, he did said at the recent 25 years season ticket meeting that Alan Nevison the Academy Manager was one of the highest paid outside the Premiership.
I don't know anything with regards Alan Nevisons past career or which clubs he managed the Academy kids but he certainly wasn't around for the likes of the above named, I believe it Steve Thornber and Peter Horne ?.

 

i don’t know if you could say that we brought all them through as apart from mcburnie they all left in their early teens and never set foot near the first team. they probably spent more time in another academy than they did ours.

prior to mcburnie, the only one(s) who went and played at a higher level than what we were at when they left were andy o’brien and des hamilton. unless there’s someone i’ve blindly missed, none of our graduates apart from them two and mcburnie have done anything at a higher level - could even argue that hamilton didn’t.

 

Do you know anything with regards Alan Nevisons past career ?.

 

Alan Nevison (under-11 coach). Man Utd 2008
Joined City in 2009

 

Simon Francis hasn’t faired too badly.

 

Wasn't he playing for some university team when he came to us. So not exactly or even remotely a product of our youth team, just a young lad we got lucky with then lost due to administration.

 

Didn’t know that.

 

That model will decrease. Big clubs can pick up the starlets for peanuts.

 

You can take the news about our academy with a pinch of salt. Until it starts reproducing players for the first team and for resale its meaningless.

 

He's fine, he was in good spirits at the game on Saturday. He makes no secret of his admiration for McCall, as he did at the weekend.

 

Simon Francis

 

In my opinion academies are overrated. Look at the robots churned out by the academies in the premiership. The better ones are good for fitness and nutrition because of their top class facilities but how many of these top academies actually produce anything special? Players develop when they hit the first team, look at the difference between Lewis O’Brien and Joe Riley. One coming through at Huddersfield, the other coming with a big reputation from Man Utd yet O’Brien looks streets ahead of Riley in terms of ability. A good talent is a good talent regardless of what academy they train at and again in my opinion in some cases they stifle development rather than encourage it.