Report: Markelo to be offered new deal

I haven't seen much of the other two lads but wish them well and hope they get other chances in the game. Unfortunately, for all four of them and many players, from top to bottom, clubs will be assessing all future contracts and I think the golden financial years will be a thing of the past.

Staggering that Pennington, Broadhead, Connolly and Dowell will still be on the books for another season despite being miles from the first team and spring chickens no more. And Bowler and Hornby will return from particularly amazing looking loan experiences.

No offence to these lads but they just shouldn't be on the books of an ambitious Premier League side.

I think it's worth loaning him again as a lot of strikers don't mature until 21 or 22-ish.

I agree with Pennington and, despite Broadhead being player of the year for U23-s, I never felt he had it in him for top flight. I think that Connolly and Dowell were badly mismanaged by Silva. Unfortunately their time at the club should come to an end. However, they should have been given a decent chance a couple of years ago. If they were given the chance, they could be decent squad players now.

Surly if we are preparing players to play in the Premier League, you are better sending players to the lower leagues here. Teams like Fleetwood, Blackpool, Wigan, etc etc. Not even necessarily local teams but still, get them prepared to play in the Premier League.

Why send a Dutch lad out on loan to his home country? He must have played there for most of his life already!

If we think he can ever make it at Everton or in the UK, where we'd get a higher transfer fee anyway, then does he not need all the English football he can get??

I'd have thought that Everton might have had some idea of young players' potential well before his contract expires and may have looked to find him a club for a small fee or for some part of any future transfer which I think used to be the practice in years gone by.

I'm fairly sure that a lot of Australian teams would be interested in Ouzounides given his nationality and the level of their A-League.

If you've got the silky skills (like Dowell) then you need people on the right wavelength to receive your passes (one touch, played at speed, in tight spaces). More likely to find that type of set up in the Eredivisie than at Fleetwood.

Also, it just helps you grow up a bit to get out of your comfort zone like that. Personally I think we need close tie-ups with clubs home and abroad to make sure the loan system is a route to the first team.

We have held onto too many players for too long and the average age of our U23 team has been significantly older than most of their top level counterparts for a few seasons now.

Much better to give more opportunities to the brightest U18 talents. If players are not beginning to show serious promise by the age of 18/19 then the odds would suggest they may not be cut out for the highest levels. Of course there will always be late developers but you cannot base the whole developmental system on that hope.

Next year we will have a much younger team with the likes of Onyango, Warrington and Rhys Hughes in midfield.

Ideally players get a year or two under the U23 coach to develop aged 17-19 and then are ready for some proper first team time on loan aged 19-20. Or if they are really good to be fast-tracked straight into the first team; like Anthony Gordon hopefully.

I think we are seeing Brands influence on the academy much more now and that will increase in the future. I'm hopeful we will have some more players capable of contributing at first team level in another year or two.

This table has us at 17th oldest out of 24. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/u21-premier-league/altersschnitt/wettbewerb/GB21

Certainly in the matches that I watched we tended to have older starting XIs. This improved a bit this season (under the orders of Brands) but was even more pronounced last season. As borne out by us having the third oldest squad in the league 18-19: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league-2/altersschnitt/wettbewerb/GB21/plus/?saison_id=2018

They hold on to players for far too long, the priority is to win and not to develop.

It just goes to show how hard it is to break into the first team from the youth ranks, for every ten that you think make it, maybe only one or two come through.

The more we can get out on loan, preferably in the UK the better as these lads need competitive football in the league of hard knocks.

I've not researched this first so let's take the average ages of the 11 players to play the most in the last 4 years (2 league wins in there...) and the average squad age (anyone who has featured)...

Year. - 1st XI. - Squad
16/17 - 18.36 No data (champions)
17/18 - 18.63 No data
18/19 - 19.91 - 19.4 (champions)
19/20 - 19.81 19.9

There you have it. When we first won the title we did it with the youngest first XI from the last 4 years, the second was with the oldest.

Don't know whether this supports your FACTS or not, but the average age has not got as high as 20, while the poor performance this year has been with a squad considerably older than previous champions - which is still not old (see Michael's post).

Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea etc teams are full of younger players, why, because they are developers, there was only one other team in this league were playing older players similar to ours.

Who have we produced? Tom Davies, now playing for our first team.

We are poor developers. Fact!!

Some low-cost sentimentality re Baxter and Charsley for different reasons but I think the club was desperate (financially) for the likes of Garbutt, Browning, Galloway and Pennington to become first-teamers or reliable subs.

We're in a different position now, thankfully, and the youth system can – with help from Brands – adapt accordingly. Looks like the age 17-ish group has some promise too.

If I did sign for such a club, would I improve more quickly at age 18 playing for the U23s with a team of 16- and 17-year-olds, most of whom are just making up the numbers? Statistics say very very few make it to the top grade and I might be the only one from my year to get that far. Or would more experienced players help me improve quicker?

Perhaps we will just sign only those youngsters guaranteed to make the grade.

You'll learn far more from a good loan than you will from the ‘experienced players' in the U23s. No disrespect to the likes of Charsley, Pennington etc.

I think the thing that will hopefully make us attractive to the good young players is if the first team is using more of those academy players. But it's Catch-22 as you can't use them if they're not good enough!

I might as well pick a lower-level team of my choice now. Or, more likely, another Premier League team with a good U23 set up.

Scrapping the ressies resulted in the kids never getting the experience of playing with and against adults, which means that the handful who ever got 'a few minutes' in the Premier League were usually lambs to the slaughter.

Regretably, clubs will have learned nothing from the current crisis and the same nonsense will repeat itself but this time with players being able to nominate which games they play on health grounds.

It's all a bloody farce!

So I went to ToffeeWeb and made a note of the 11 players who played the most games in each year, then averaged their ages at the time.

It can work with very effective use of loans and feeder clubs (eg, Chelsea and Vitesse Arnhem) and even buy-back clauses – and developing a structured route to the first team.

But you're right, if you want a successful career, you'd probably be better picking a club that offers you some first-team football and a good footballing education too (like Crewe used to do, for example).