champs08
Well-known member
With respect mate, if you’re a 15 year old and Chelsea come knocking to go into their youth set up, it’s a very easy decision. The finances, the set up, the support they get and the fact they’re surrounded by the best youth players in that area - it’s a no brainer. All of these parents see it as the holy grail. Look at Gilmore of Chelsea - £50k per week? Family will never have to worry about money ever again. Lovelace at Millwall? £1k per week?Hopefully he might decide that he's better off staying with us for a bit. If he does, he'll stay in a familiar setting where he has a real chance of progression. He could easily get lost in a Premier league set up whereas at Millwall he'll most likely regular appearances. Anyway, a Prem team would probably loan him out so in terms of experience, he'll do just as well with Millwall as elsewhere.
One of the problems is that the big clubs sign up absolutely everyone they can even though there's very little chance that they'll get a starting spot. Look at Ojo. He's 24. Does he have a realistic chance of making the Liverpool first team? I doubt it, much as he's improved in the last couple of matches. However, instead of selling players who don't make the grade, the big clubs hang on to them just in case they improve or perhaps hoping they'll get a bigger transfer fee at some point. So we'll most likely lose Ojo in the summer and Liverpool will loan him out elsewhere. Even if we do get him for next year, we couldn't build a team around him because we can never be sure how long we'll have him. Some teams have whole squads out on loan - Chelsea have 22 players out on loan. How is this good for either the players or football? The obvious solution would be to cap the number of players that a team can have on their books. That would reduce the amount of poaching from lower league clubs and players would have better careers too. Of course, the current set up obviously suits the big clubs so no chance of anything like that happening.
We are a feeder club to the big boys when they come knocking. Can’t see that ever changing.