Wednesday 2 December 2009

Onuoha's frustration

An interesting interview with Ian Herbert in The Independent today. He says that recent transfers have limited opportunities for Academy graduates.

"Three or four years ago at this point he [Weiss] might have played 50 games for the club already," Onuoha says. "In training you see he's a really good player and in my opinion has much more technical ability than any of the [first team] academy [graduates] - certainly more than Micah [Richards] and me. But he has not been able to break into the side because of the people ahead of him and the pressure that comes with the shirt these days."

For all Hughes' talk that City want to build around the Academy players, I'm not sure that many other clubs would have responded to the impeccable form of a 22 year old Academy graduate centre half over the second half of a season by buying two new centre backs at a combined cost of almost £40million. To say nothing of Vincent Kompany. I wrote here about why I think an Academy system is probably incompatible with our transfer policy. It's a shame but I can't see Onuoha ever making it as a first team player at City. And I'm starting to worry about others too.

4 comments:

Rebel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rebel said...

It will be tough for the academy lads to break through with all the new players brought in,which is a pity.

Simon said...

There are further comments on this story on Football365:
http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_5740436,00.html
The interesting thing is his comments at the end:
""I don't think it is impossible to get back to where I was," he said.

Onuoha added: "In my time here I've never gone through a season when I've been first choice, whether through injury or selection.

"So I've seen this type of thing before and I always seem to end up playing. I never see people come in and think 'that's it'. It's the people who really want to be here who'll be here the longest and when it matters.""

Show's a very mature attitude.

Unknown said...

onouha is quickly becoming the most well spoken player at city, its a shame he isn't playing regularly!! About a year ago I was saying that he seemed a future captain... now what hughes? Go and spend another useless 40+ for nothing better than before.