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Makom
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So, while schooling Fish about the realities of football, I was reminded of one David Edgar....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edgar_(footballer)

 

Signed to our academy age 14, he made his debut in December 2006. After just 19 Premier League appearances and being managed by Roeder, Allardyce, Keegan, Hughton (2 caretaker spells), Kinnear and finally Shearer, he left at the end of the 2008/9 relegation season, declining to sign a new contract. He has since bounced around Championship clubs, with spells at Burnley, Swansea, Birmingham and Huddersfield. Now 28, other than 28 appearances and 2 goals for Canada, his career highlight would appear to be only being a regular for one full season with Burnley.

 

He doesn't appear to have been injury afflicted, so you have to wonder if he might have done better in football if we had given him the opportunity of playing in a stable team with a long term manager. He may well have just not been good enough, but the fact we offered him another contract doesn't appear to suggest so. And as I said in the deconstruction thread, we didn't even really make any financial return on him - we got £300k fee, which I doubt even covered his 3 years of senior wages.

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Aye Edgar was shite, same as that Huntington lad was. Our academy is shocking really, Carroll, Taylor, Ramage, Orr, Ameobi brothers, Dummett, that's the best it has put out in the last decade, even the mackems put out Henderson and Colback, Henderson being better than anyone in our list imo and Colback is a regular starter for us :lol:. Shit coaching staff to blame tbh, we've had plenty of lads come in who were highly rated like that Speer lad, Kadar and Zamblera or whatever he was called and none have come close to making it, never mind the pathetically average players we have produced from the area.

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Who was the last top class local player the club produced? I'm struggling unless I go as far back as the 80s, when we sold them all anyway. There were one or two half decent players that came through in the 90s under Keegan. Since then you've got Carroll, also sold, and question marks over his fitness anyway. So it isn't exactly a new problem.

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It's almost as if we're being run on a shoestring.

Think it's another obvious flaw in Ashley's grand plan. The promising youngsters we've acquired (like Abeid and Birigrimana) aren't going to develop just by chance. If you don't invest in the coaching, it's a complete waste of time. Similar applies to the first team.

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Think it's another obvious flaw in Ashley's grand plan. The promising youngsters we've acquired (like Abeid and Birigrimana) aren't going to develop just by chance. If you don't invest in the coaching, it's a complete waste of time. Similar applies to the first team.

 

Caulkin said something on the Times podcast that rang true, he said the players at Newcastle are trained, not coached. That's why, bar a couple who've the self-motivation to self improve*, we've not seen any players grow at Newcastle

 

 

 

*he mentioned Cabaye and Debuchy as examples.

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I get the impression our coaching staff are shit at every level. As Alex said you'd think it was the one area he HAD to invest in to make his model work. Talk about false economies.

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Clearly not had good advice from the likes of Kinnear and Wise et al.

 

I can't believe a brilliant businessman can be so careless.

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He got stung by that chancer Allardyce with all the snake oil salesmen on the payroll back then but he's gone too ridiculous extremes in response to that. It's fucking mental how he's jeopardised our PL status again by being such a skinflint. When you look at prize money for league positions and potential sell-on fees lost for players (not just in the development squad) then he's probably lost a lot of money and made the team significantly worse too. No one expects us to outspend Chelsea or Man City but there's no real reason why a long term plan to emulate what Southampton have been doing couldn't have been in place for ages now. How long's he been here? 7 years or something and 5 back in the top flight. Instead Graham Carr has been instructed to find cheap, available talent with a potential sell-on fee and that's it, i.e. there's zero structure behind that model. The board are a joke, Lee Charnley ffs. The coaching team is a joke and even the scouting is (I think Carr does a good job but he's 70-odd and he basically is the European scouting network). Relegation is precisely what the owner deserves for being so remiss in terms of looking after his investment.

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The whole problem is there isn't any plan for sporting achievement or improvement in the club. If it happens it's by accident.

All Ashley wants is the team on telly and to that end he will allow enough spending to keep us in the premier league. But he's also a gambler by nature so at times such as now he will take a risk to achieve his goal at the lowest possible price. I imagine we probably have less coaches than most other premier league clubs and we certainly have lower quality ones. We do enough to put out teams at all levels but nothing more than that.

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What I don't get is he (claims, at least) to be a football fan, attends a fair few games and seems genuinely pleased when we win against Man Utd (for example) or something like that. It's like when you have some brilliantly scientist who's also devoutly religious. I.e. he seems able to compartmentalise those conflicts as those the way he runs the club doesn't get in the way of his experience as a 'supporter'. Or he's just a cunt.

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