Olise

[Ascotexgunner]

I think someone needs to post that tweet on what he said about Reading and kill the "offer him a better deal" arguement. He was never going to resign. Frankly I think he had an attitude problem here and looked down his nose at us., Didn't put in the effort he could have done and we made the right decision even if it meant losing money. Definitely mis management by us but then we have been an utter shitshow of a circus for a decade now.

[Orion1871]

I think someone needs to post that tweet on what he said about Reading and kill the "offer him a better deal" arguement. He was never going to resign. Frankly I think he had an attitude problem here and looked down his nose at us., Didn't put in the effort he could have done and we made the right decision even if it meant losing money. Definitely mis management by us but then we have been an utter shitshow of a circus for a decade now.

The fake one?

[Snowflake Royal]

Just to put in perspective how rubbish our academy is. Apparently 75 players from the academy have played in the first team. How many have been any good? Brentford don’t have an academy. A small example of players sold. Hogan £11.5 million Maupey £20 million Watkins £ 33 million. Toney probably £50-60 million, in today’s market. Not to mention several other defenders and midfielders. The academy is not working 20 years with a couple of exceptions who have all gone on to better things with other clubs.

Are you mad?

The Academy has produced McCarthy, Ashdown, Hamer, Richards, Dickie, Hyam, Cooper, Hector, Tishbola, Rinomhota, Karacan, Robson-Kanu, Stacey, Henry, Sigurdsson and Fosu who have all gone on to sign for and/or play at this level or higher with other clubs. I'm not even counting Olise or Long there.

It's the one success we've had the last 10 years.

Brentford run a completely different model. They find players with promise they can put in their team and sell for a profit. We run an Academy to churn out Championship quality players and have largely chosen to let them leave for free and at times ignored using them. The quality is there.

[SCIAG]

Apparently someone is offering a cash prize for the worst post in the thread. Certainly the competition so far is very stiff.

Perhaps if we had a proper scouting network instead of relying on the fraud Kia Joorabchian then maybe we'd have identified sooner that he'd be a star and we'd have made better decisions such as selling Moore and offering Olise and Richards better deals. I'm sure both would have accepted a decent deal with a £25m and £15m release clause respectively.

You think our scouting network is the reason we didn't offer Olise, who was playing for our club, a contract with a higher release clause?

You're sure he would have signed a deal with a £25m release clause? You're sure Richards would have renewed? No chance whatsoever they would have done a Sidwell, given that Richards did, in fact, do a Sidwell?

We also lost Osho for nothing who's done decent things for Luton.

Osho plays in the same positions as Tom Holmes. Holmes has played over 100 games for us (only one before Osho left). Osho has played less than 50 for Luton in the same time.

Good player no doubt but losing him has hardly been a disaster. I view him more as someone whose presence meant we could have sold Moore, rather than "one who got away". Maybe in a few years he'll be playing at a higher level than Holmes and I'll look silly.

[Jackson Corner]

Just to put in perspective how rubbish our academy is. Apparently 75 players from the academy have played in the first team. How many have been any good? Brentford don’t have an academy. A small example of players sold. Hogan £11.5 million Maupey £20 million Watkins £ 33 million. Toney probably £50-60 million, in today’s market. Not to mention several other defenders and midfielders. The academy is not working 20 years with a couple of exceptions who have all gone on to better things with other clubs.

Are you mad?

The Academy has produced McCarthy, Ashdown, Hamer, Richards, Dickie, Hyam, Cooper, Hector, Tishbola, Rinomhota, Karacan, Robson-Kanu, Stacey, Henry, Sigurdsson and Fosu who have all gone on to sign for and/or play at this level or higher with other clubs. I'm not even counting Olise or Long there.

It's the one success we've had the last 10 years.

Brentford run a completely different model. They find players with promise they can put in their team and sell for a profit. We run an Academy to churn out Championship quality players and have largely chosen to let them leave for free and at times ignored using them. The quality is there.

Out of 75 players? Most of those left for free after the club would have invested money in them. Cooper was rubbish for us. Stacy never played and left for free. If they were any good why have spent the last 8 years fighting relegation Olise was a Chelsea academy player. How many academy players played in the 106 team? All the best young players in this area go to London clubs or like Theo Walcott Southampton.

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

[Royal_jimmy]

Apparently someone is offering a cash prize for the worst post in the thread. Certainly the competition so far is very stiff.

Perhaps if we had a proper scouting network instead of relying on the fraud Kia Joorabchian then maybe we'd have identified sooner that he'd be a star and we'd have made better decisions such as selling Moore and offering Olise and Richards better deals. I'm sure both would have accepted a decent deal with a £25m and £15m release clause respectively.

You think our scouting network is the reason we didn't offer Olise, who was playing for our club, a contract with a higher release clause?

You're sure he would have signed a deal with a £25m release clause? You're sure Richards would have renewed? No chance whatsoever they would have done a Sidwell, given that Richards did, in fact, do a Sidwell?

We also lost Osho for nothing who's done decent things for Luton.

Osho plays in the same positions as Tom Holmes. Holmes has played over 100 games for us (only one before Osho left). Osho has played less than 50 for Luton in the same time.

Good player no doubt but losing him has hardly been a disaster. I view him more as someone whose presence meant we could have sold Moore, rather than "one who got away". Maybe in a few years he'll be playing at a higher level than Holmes and I'll look silly.

We could have offered Olise a new deal as he just broke into the team but didn't until the FFP morass we're in hit us. He'd have been nuts declining £10-15k a week back then having been an unproven player at that point, a risk for us yes but then we knew the player better than most.

Richards was a bit more unlucky but we still had chances to offer improved deals but didn't because we wasted money on bang average signings instead.

[Snowflake Royal]

Just to put in perspective how rubbish our academy is. Apparently 75 players from the academy have played in the first team. How many have been any good? Brentford don’t have an academy. A small example of players sold. Hogan £11.5 million Maupey £20 million Watkins £ 33 million. Toney probably £50-60 million, in today’s market. Not to mention several other defenders and midfielders. The academy is not working 20 years with a couple of exceptions who have all gone on to better things with other clubs.

Are you mad?

The Academy has produced McCarthy, Ashdown, Hamer, Richards, Dickie, Hyam, Cooper, Hector, Tishbola, Rinomhota, Karacan, Robson-Kanu, Stacey, Henry, Sigurdsson and Fosu who have all gone on to sign for and/or play at this level or higher with other clubs. I'm not even counting Olise or Long there.

It's the one success we've had the last 10 years.

Brentford run a completely different model. They find players with promise they can put in their team and sell for a profit. We run an Academy to churn out Championship quality players and have largely chosen to let them leave for free and at times ignored using them. The quality is there.

Out of 75 players? Most of those left for free after the club would have invested money in them. Cooper was rubbish for us. Stacy never played and left for free. If they were any good why have spent the last 8 years fighting relegation Olise was a Chelsea academy player. How many academy players played in the 106 team? All the best young players in this area go to London clubs or like Theo Walcott Southampton.

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

Sorry Jackson you're an idiot if you expect an Academy to produce more than 1 or 2 quality players a season. Our hit rate is brilliant. You say out of 75? That's more than 20% hit rate, 1 in 5 FFS.

Without the Academy every one of those hundreds, thousands of appearances would have had to come from signing players. That would cost far more than the cost of running the Academy.

[Clyde1998]

Just to put in perspective how rubbish our academy is. Apparently 75 players from the academy have played in the first team. How many have been any good? Brentford don’t have an academy. A small example of players sold. Hogan £11.5 million Maupey £20 million Watkins £ 33 million. Toney probably £50-60 million, in today’s market. Not to mention several other defenders and midfielders. The academy is not working 20 years with a couple of exceptions who have all gone on to better things with other clubs.

Are you mad?

The Academy has produced McCarthy, Ashdown, Hamer, Richards, Dickie, Hyam, Cooper, Hector, Tishbola, Rinomhota, Karacan, Robson-Kanu, Stacey, Henry, Sigurdsson and Fosu who have all gone on to sign for and/or play at this level or higher with other clubs. I'm not even counting Olise or Long there.

It's the one success we've had the last 10 years.

Brentford run a completely different model. They find players with promise they can put in their team and sell for a profit. We run an Academy to churn out Championship quality players and have largely chosen to let them leave for free and at times ignored using them. The quality is there.

Out of 75 players? Most of those left for free after the club would have invested money in them. Cooper was rubbish for us. Stacy never played and left for free. If they were any good why have spent the last 8 years fighting relegation Olise was a Chelsea academy player. How many academy players played in the 106 team? All the best young players in this area go to London clubs or like Theo Walcott Southampton.

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

On the specific players mentioned: Cooper was far from rubbish; he may have been a little raw at the time he left us, but the only reason we sold him is because he wasn't great with the ball at this feet (back when Stam was manager) not because he wasn't good enough as a defender. Stacey not playing might say more about the manager than the player not being good enough, also see Fosu on that. Olise was at Chelsea (Arsenal and Man City for brief periods too, IIRC), but he still entered our youth system aged fourteen - there's a huge amount of development that happens between fourteen and becoming an established first team footballer at Championship level. The 106 team didn't have any academy players due to the academy only being about five years old at that point and it will take time for any improvements to the youth system to show itself. We obviously cannot realistically compete with the top London clubs for the top talent, but we still produce enough players who could play at Premier League level to more than pay for the academy and enough Championship quality players to augment our first team squad.

On the general quality of players produced: I had a look at the Football Manager database (usually very good for this sort of thing), which has a 'Home Grown' filter. I used the 15-21 range (players who were at a club for three years between the ages of 15 and 21); this will include players who weren't academy players and exclude players who weren't at a club for as long as three years during those age groups, but gives a good appoximation of the players each club is producing. I additionally limited it to players who were 22 or older at the start of the season to reduce the number of players who qualify as Home Grown but are nowhere near the first team (although that does also exclude younger players - like Olise or Danny Loader for us).

Based on those currently playing in the top seven levels of the English game who were 'Home Grown' at Reading (Total: 63): Premier League - 4; Championship - 11; League One - 10; League Two - 6; National League - 6; NL North/South - 13; Regional Premier - 13.

That's the highest number of Home Grown players playing in the top seven leagues of any Premier League or Football League club (Man Utd and Chelsea are second with 55).

Of those playing in the top two divisions, we're joint ninth with fifteen players (level with Southampton); we're behind Man Utd (31), Chelsea (22), Arsenal (22), Tottenham (18), Everton (18), Man City (18), Liverpool (17) and Blackburn (16). Expanding this out to the top three levels and we're seventh with 25 players behind Man Utd (40), Chelsea (33), Tottenham (29), Everton (28), Liverpool (28) and Arsenal (26).

Using a weighting system based on Football Manager's league reputation to compare clubs is interesting. For context, the reputation of a competition is between 1 and 200, with only the World Cup and Champions League getting the maximum rating. I based the weighting on a percentage of the Premier League's reputation (184), so a player in the Premier League gets a score of 1.00 (184), Championship ~0.73 (134), League One ~0.58 (107), League Two ~0.46 (85), National League ~0.39 (72), NL Regional 0.25 (46) and Regional Premier ~0.19 (35).

The purpose would be to show what clubs are consistently producing players, with weaker leagues being given a lower importance. The top ten were:

1. Man Utd - 36.8
2. Chelsea - 31.9
3. Tottenham - 28.8
4. Reading - 28.7
5. Arsenal - 28.5
6. Everton - 28.5
7. Liverpool - 26.6
8. Charlton - 25.1
9. Southampton - 24.8
10. Blackburn - 23.5

This doesn't take into account players based in different countries, but gives a good guide to the quality of our youth set up. We've got at least seventeen 'Home Grown' players playing outside of England.

Another study (here) uses a different methodology: any player who was at a club prior to the age of eighteen and was listed as English on FBref is included (so any non-English player is excluded). That study put us thirteenth for the 2021-22 season - with a similar ranking to clubs like Southampton, West Brom and Aston Villa. We were thirteen for their 2016-17 report, fourteenth in their 2017-18 report and twelfth in their 2020-21 report.

That report stated we produced the fifth biggest producer of Championship players for the 2021-22 season, behind only Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal.

The short of it is: if our youth system is a waste of money, basically every youth system in the country is a waste of money. We've become one of the best producers of players in England.

(I wonder if anyone can tell I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with this! )

[Snowflake Royal]

Brilliant work Clyde

[Mr Angry]

That is an impressive piece of research!

Sadly, those that have a simplistic, fixed view of "the Academy" will simply ignore the empirical evidence and instead bemoan our lot........

[Sutekh]

That is an impressive piece of research!

Sadly, those that have a simplistic, fixed view of "the Academy" will simply ignore the empirical evidence and instead bemoan our lot........

Yes, try and write it up into a presentation for Mark Bowen to make sure they’re aware - certainly help with the cat 1 status as well!

Just wish those making the decisions would take more of a chance and give a bit more time with the players coming through than just “binning” them and saying they’re not good enough - but then when you’ve got a manager saying that experienced professionals at the club aren’t good enough as well, what chance does an Academy lad stand

[From Despair To Where?]

We could have offered Olise a new deal as he just broke into the team but didn't until the FFP morass we're in hit us. He'd have been nuts declining £10-15k a week back then having been an unproven player at that point, a risk for us yes but then we knew the player better than most.

Richards was a bit more unlucky but we still had chances to offer improved deals but didn't because we wasted money on bang average signings instead.

Eh, are you advocating offering an 18 year old who's just broken into the first team squad £15k a week?

[Mr Angry]

I don't disagree Sutekh; one hopes that, regardless if we DO go down or not this season, we can start next season with the mindset that it is better to use players coming up through the Academy rather than splash the cash on over the hill crocks looking for a bit of a final pay day from a mug club.

There has to be a change in attitude; we need to have a vision for what the club is all about, what realistic short/medium/long term goals are and to implement plans on how we are to achieve them. Top of that list is to understand what needs to be done to win over the Town and the fans (who have fallen out of love with Reading FC over the last decade).

I am sick and tired of people saying that football clubs are businesses; if thats the case then the owners should bloody well behave like business people then, rather than failed Apprentice candidates...

An example; over the weekend, I read that Brighton have identified 25 "Critical" employees of the Football Club, both on and off the pitch, and have instigated plans identifiying a short list of potential replacements - both internal as well as external - who they would move for in the event that one of those Critical employees were to leave the club..............THAT is planning.

[Hound]

Just to put in perspective how rubbish our academy is. Apparently 75 players from the academy have played in the first team. How many have been any good? Brentford don’t have an academy. A small example of players sold. Hogan £11.5 million Maupey £20 million Watkins £ 33 million. Toney probably £50-60 million, in today’s market. Not to mention several other defenders and midfielders. The academy is not working 20 years with a couple of exceptions who have all gone on to better things with other clubs.

Are you mad?

The Academy has produced McCarthy, Ashdown, Hamer, Richards, Dickie, Hyam, Cooper, Hector, Tishbola, Rinomhota, Karacan, Robson-Kanu, Stacey, Henry, Sigurdsson and Fosu who have all gone on to sign for and/or play at this level or higher with other clubs. I'm not even counting Olise or Long there.

It's the one success we've had the last 10 years.

Brentford run a completely different model. They find players with promise they can put in their team and sell for a profit. We run an Academy to churn out Championship quality players and have largely chosen to let them leave for free and at times ignored using them. The quality is there.

Out of 75 players? Most of those left for free after the club would have invested money in them. Cooper was rubbish for us. Stacy never played and left for free. If they were any good why have spent the last 8 years fighting relegation Olise was a Chelsea academy player. How many academy players played in the 106 team? All the best young players in this area go to London clubs or like Theo Walcott Southampton.

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

You can’t just compare us with Brentford as a reason to do down the academy

They had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do, found some very good value players and re-invested well.

They could have done all of that with an academy as well. Like I said somewhere else, they way they have been managed they’d have made a success if whatever they chose to do. No other club in the league has succeeded like they have - to an extent Brighton but iirc they broke the ffp etc and would have been in trouble had they not gone up

[Hound]

Oh and personally I’m all for using the academy as much as possible. I’d take 3-4 years in div1 if it meant seeing home grown come through. I’d much rather see it

Give me a team with Ehib, Azeez, Craig, Scott, Camara, CBC, Clarke(s), Abrefa supplemented with a couple of experienced players next year and I genuinely don’t care what div we are in

(I fear however this isn’t a given and well buy some old duffers in an attempt to boot our way out of div1)

[tmesis]

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

The failure there is assuming scrapping the academy would make us like Brentford. It wouldn't. It would make us like Reading, but with no youth players coming through.

[Hound]

Would you rather be Brentford or us? It’s just a massive waste of money.

The failure there is assuming scrapping the academy would make us like Brentford. It wouldn't. It would make us like Reading, but with no youth players coming through.

Yep. We’ve failed due to our recruitment not our academy.

The whole reason we are in this mess is appalling value signings not blowing money on tbe academy (which is irrelevant in ffp anyway)

[Royals and Racers]

Oh and personally I’m all for using the academy as much as possible. I’d take 3-4 years in div1 if it meant seeing home grown come through. I’d much rather see it

Give me a team with Ehib, Azeez, Craig, Scott, Camara, CBC, Clarke(s), Abrefa supplemented with a couple of experienced players next year and I genuinely don’t care what div we are in

(I fear however this isn’t a given and well buy some old duffers in an attempt to boot our way out of div1)

I have seen enough of Scott to know he`s not 1st team potential- however someone you haven`t mentioned Matty Carson definitely is.

[Sutekh]

Oh and personally I’m all for using the academy as much as possible. I’d take 3-4 years in div1 if it meant seeing home grown come through. I’d much rather see it

Give me a team with Ehib, Azeez, Craig, Scott, Camara, CBC, Clarke(s), Abrefa supplemented with a couple of experienced players next year and I genuinely don’t care what div we are in

(I fear however this isn’t a given and well buy some old duffers in an attempt to boot our way out of div1)

I have seen enough of Scott to know he`s not 1st team potential- however someone you haven`t mentioned Matty Carson definitely is.

Where was Carson before joining Reading? Seems to have suddenly joined from nowhere and starting to wonder if Reading can hang on to him esp. as he seems to be listed as “Triallist” still on team sheets.

[Royals and Racers]

Oh and personally I’m all for using the academy as much as possible. I’d take 3-4 years in div1 if it meant seeing home grown come through. I’d much rather see it

Give me a team with Ehib, Azeez, Craig, Scott, Camara, CBC, Clarke(s), Abrefa supplemented with a couple of experienced players next year and I genuinely don’t care what div we are in

(I fear however this isn’t a given and well buy some old duffers in an attempt to boot our way out of div1)

I have seen enough of Scott to know he`s not 1st team potential- however someone you haven`t mentioned Matty Carson definitely is.

Where was Carson before joining Reading? Seems to have suddenly joined from nowhere and starting to wonder if Reading can hang on to him esp. as he seems to be listed as “Triallist” still on team sheets.

Accrington Stanley and he hasn't appeared as a trialist for some time- others including Maragh yes.