bishops finger wrote:
Your giving these youngsters a chance this season because you have little choice Dave, your owners doing things on the cheap as you all know, squad wise you may have gone big but there isnt many first team 'men' in there is their? You was always going to be forced into playing the kids as soon as injuries struck.
I'll definitely acknowledge though that at Rovers we don't have great record with bringing the youth through, we have a few promising young lads at the minute but yes id like to see more coming through.
Every team has little choice but to bring academy players through. It's the way forward. There are so many financial benefits to bringing through your own players. They offer dispersions to the salary cap. They free up quota and marquee player spots. They want to play for the club they've grown up supporting so their contracts are easier to negotiate.
I don't want to derail to thread too much, but Rovers are currently following the Warrington model of a few years ago and just buying a team. Abdull left, and that is the perfect time to see what Ellis could have done, and that would only have been for the odd game when injuries/suspensions hit. Instead they went out and bought Reynolds who is a garbage player and probably no better than what Ellis could do.
Finances might have forced our hand the last couple of years into playing some more academy players, but 100% in the long run it will help alleviate financial pressure on the club.