See we lost then?
We have one of the finest pool of young players in the world on our doorstep. Look how often Cas schools make finals. Surely only the Wigan / Leigh Servie Area can rival ours.
Now, the club is paying a bit of a price for cutbacks that had to be made when we were relegated. I know money is often tight, but if we ringfenced £100k of our playing budget and instead of paying an average overseas player to play and give him a house etc....., why not invest that on top of what we do currently with our juniors?
I know the club has a junior structure, but there is always more that can be done. At present we cannot be the biggest club in the game yet, BUT we can have a junior programme that rivals the best in the world.
If we staff it with high quality sports science and coaching staff and invest in the finest facilites we can that will pay off. Ajax is not amongst the biggest football clubs in the world, but its youth system is. That can be our model.
There is no reason why we cannot have a squad of 24 with around 18 local players in time, no reason at all, but it need the vision and investment.
Im very disapointed in the news about "oh well Liam Watts was got rid of cos he was leading Westy astray!" RUBBISH. Maybe he was, but you manage the situation! Work with young players. Im a teacher and if we did that we would excude 20 kids a week! Thats so very very poor and is a worrying signal from the club. At worse, we should have loaned him off to allow him to grow up - which he would.