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For years, Villa have prided themselves on having one of the best academies in the country. However, and quite surprisingly, there has never really been a steady flow of players who have got into the first team. Whether those players have been considered not good enough, were overlooked in favour of external targets, or whatever, the issue of “great academy, no end product” is a strange one.
Looking at the academy and, to a great extent, the young players at the club who have progressed from it, there are a lot of positives that we, as fans, can look to. One only has to look at the emergence of Marc Albrighton, of Barry Bannan, or Ciaran Clark, to see that in those three alone, we have some future first team regulars. But it’s not just those three – we have Lichaj, Baker, the more experienced Delfouneso, as well as other academy products that could all end up in the first team.
Build it, and they will come
If you’ll forgive me for a second for stealing the “Field of Dreams” quote for the above header, there is a logic to putting in the foundations for the club’s success. Villa have to make some stark choices about how they want to see the future, and how they want to get there. In reality, we have three choices. They are:
1) Invest heavily in expensive players
2) Spend money on older players close to the end of their careers
3) Use the youth as a supplement to the first team
Of these three, each one of them has it’s risk.
The first option relies on a constant stream of funding from the owner, and with Manchester City operating with a far larger budget, we are in a tough position to punch our weight.
The second option is cheaper, but doesn’t really offer much return on outlay. Sure, the older players may succeed, but it is a dead loss in terms of capital outlay.
The third option poses a risk that the youth might not be good enough. It is arguable that experience in the Premier League counts for a lot and thus, sometimes, can’t be substituted for youthful exuberance.
Is any option good enough? Well the reality is that we need to do a bit of all three.
We need to invest in players when they become available but we can’t keep affording to pay out £20m for every position on the pitch. That is, unless Randy wants to splurge £200m in a close season and, barring selling the Browns, that isn’t going to happen. The purchase of Darren Bent is a great one, but we all know that we’d be lucky to get one of those calibre signings in a season. If we push it we might get two, but we’d need to keep hold of them as well. That’s where the problem lies. Every player we pluck from a smaller team seems to want to leave us for a bigger team given time. It’s only natural after all – you can’t tempt players with success, then expect them to not want more.
Which leads me on to the youth. You have to use them. Whether they are good enough for top six or not, they have to be used. Why? The other options have no progress associated with them. We can’t afford to spend the money on the biggest names, and we can’t afford to keep treading water with average players. Something has got to give, and the only real option is to use youth more.
I’d supplement the youth with those top quality signings that cost the big money. This means an end to the buying of the average players, the journeymen who just make up numbers. The reality is that, looking at our current squad, most of our team would never be bought if we adopted this attitude. It illustrates the real bare bones we are operating off of.
Quality youth and quality players
This is where the strategy has to come in. Lerner has to look at a season in the not too distant future and realise that one season we are going to have to pump maybe £60-70m in for one summer window. With that money, we need a top quality keeper, a top quality centre half, and a top quality midfielder. Once we have those three in place, we have the bones where we can flesh out with youth.
We might be able to get by breaking it down over a few years. For example, if we bought Given this summer, we could argue that we have a solid keeper there. We could probably get Scott Parker for £15m if we tried hard enough. £15m would get us a top quality centre half too, so there we’d have a solid basis for the team. Would anyone argue that we’d have a better team there than this year? If we sell Downing and Young, we might even balance those books in one go.
Players like Bannan, Delfouneso, Albrighton, Delph, Clark, and Lichaj (as well as others) need to step up to the plate next season. They need to because the longer this stretches out, these players don’t become promising youth – they become underachievers.
The time has come for Aston Villa. Sink or swim, we need to give youth a chance. It’s a gamble for sure, but what in life worth achieving doesn’t involve a risk?
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