You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too; The Academy of Football

You also can’t blame David Moyes for using senior players to try and get his team out of a relegation scrap. Moyes relies on the academy coaches for their recommendations on players and does include youth players in first-team training, especially before Cup matches. Moyes isn’t dead-set on eliminating the Academy of football, he’s just trying to win games.

Supporters are also fickle on this issue, exacerbated by social media soap box yelling. The same supporters who tweet or comment ‘West Ham should be all over this signing’ a million times a transfer window (and winge when another team signs literally any player), are the same ones demanding youth players make the first team.

Which is it, new players starting or youth players being given a spot? Both cannot exist in one team at a rate that will keep the social media armchair managers happy, so the countless accounts that shout nonsense can be ignored for the most part.

The reality about the Academy of Football is that it needs a makeover on the player side. A few names will come through and make an impact, Mubama for one and Ollie Scarles seems to be another, but if the professional coaches, scouts, and football analysts this club employs deem a player unlikely to be a Premier League starter, Moyes and the club have to trust them.

Sure, you’ll get burned eventually by players like Toni Martinez now of FC Porto, but for every Martinez, there will be a few Jeremy Ngakia’s who had everyone thinking he was a legitimate Premier League starter. Prospect analysis is a craps shoot at best and with relegation on the line the academy clear-out is more understandable despite still being unfortunate for West Ham supporters.