The Brentford model is to only sign players up at 17

Couldn’t we have signed both Martin and Barden in theory without our academy?

To be clear, I’m very much in favour of our academy, but say you’re a smaller club without prem cash, say Ipswich, I could see the appeal of taking a more short term approach and not worrying about cultivating talent at age 8, and only getting involved when they hit 17.

Yeah, you will miss out on some, but there are plenty of good players released from the cat 1 academies at 16 that go on to have very successful careers.

You don’t think the Brentford model has any merit and that’s fair enough.

Posted By: SimonOTBC, Jun 9, 16:30:44