New Youth Policy

Interesting stuff in The Times the other day - Garry Cook suggesting that we are going to move from our current transfer policy (buying experienced players for big fees) to a more Arsenal based system:

Asked if Arsenal’s policy of plucking the best young players from around the world was something to which they aspired, Garry Cook, the City chief executive, said: “Yes, absolutely, because financially it’s a better model than the one you get into negotiating a market price that has no predetermining factors other than the supply and demand...

“I think you’re going to see Manchester City really ramp up its activity in the youth area. There’s often the opinion that we are abandoning that as far as future investments are concerned because we’re just going to keep buying players, but that’s actually the antithesis of what we’re trying to do."

I think this is well intentioned but doomed to failure. There are, broadly, two approaches to building football teams. The first is the Liverpool/Chelsea approach. This is, essentially, the buying of a team of ready-made players for large sums of money. Only two of Liverpool's regular starters have been at the club for a long period of time - Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. At Chelsea only John Terry has been at the club since childhood, and the second longest serving player, Frank Lampard, was 23 when he made his Chelsea debut.

The other is the Arsenal/Manchester United approach. This is to create a culture at the club which encourages youth development, and leads to a conveyer belt of young talent coming through the ranks into the first team. Yes, some of the players join the club at 17 rather than 14 (think Fàbregas, Macheda, Ramsey or even Rooney - 18 when he signed), but the central point remains the same. A good number of regulars for Arsenal and Manchester United have been at the club from a young age: Nicklas Bendtner, Gaël Clichy, Denilson, Cesc, Aaron Ramsey, Alex Song, Robin van Persie from one club; Gary Nevillle, Wes Brown, Darren Fletcher, Ryan Giggs, Jonny Evans, John O'Shea, Rooney and Paul Scholes from the other. I don't mean that these teams don't buy experienced players (look at Berbatov, Arshavin etc), but there's no doubt that their teams are developed in a very different way from Liverpool and Chelsea.

And there's also no doubt over which model we are moving towards. At St. Andrew's the other week we fielded a first eleven made entirely of players Hughes had signed, as we also had done at Villa Park. (Admittedly Wright-Phillips was from our Academy but that's rather accidental here.) This January Hughes is set to spend more money on new players, and will do so again next summer as well. And he has to: he is working to ever-expanding targets, and the team must improve every season for him to maintain his job.

But where does this leave our moving to the Arsenal/United approach? It's clear that in both cases the approach is very much the invention of the manager. And it's also true that their ability to impose such a system is largely dependant on their total authority within their clubs. Years of success and trophies act as their bargaining chips, and they can comfortably reject short-term worries. This is why such a policy has failed at Chelsea. Frank Arnesen has been trying for years to recretate the Wenger project, signing up the world's best fifteen year olds. But a series of managers under short term pressures have stuck with the experienced first team squad rather than experiment with youth. It is telling that Gaël Kakuta remains the most famous Arnesen recruit. Similarly with Liverpool - Rafael Benítez has bought just as many talented teenagers, with as much waste as at Chelsea. Because neither club has a culture of blooding youngsters in the first team, it is no surprise that none of them are good enough to break through. You can't just buy a fifteen year old prodigy, train him for four years, play him in the Reserves and expect him to be be edge out Michael Essien and Michael Ballack. Fàbregas is the player he is today because Wenger has been playing him regularly from the age of seventeen.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the Manchester City project does not look one well suited to conversion into a Wenger style production line. Mark Hughes will get sacked if he does not make sixth this year. Next year the target will be raised to fourth, and then probably to second or third. We will, I imagine, be expected to win the title in 2013/14. If he slips, we will bring in someone who can - Mourinho, Hiddink, or whoever else. The idea that we will accept the possible shortfall in Premier League points that comes from playing the kids just does not sound right. The push for progress will demand otherwise. And we can buy all the talented teenagers we want but without the acceptance that they have to grow while playing in the first team we will never have the Arsenal-type system to which Garry Cook aspires.