Everton U18s trounced 8-2 by Man City

● Football is a game you play to win.
● You play as a team, to achieve more than the sum of your parts.
● Winning becomes a habbit.
● A winning mentality engenders winning players who play better.
● Losing does the exact opposite.

This new youth philosophy you Fantasy Football fanboys have come up with to put down Unsworth and his achievements is total bollocks and I reject it completely.

Have to agree. Football is about preventing the opposition scoring, and then when you have the ball creating and hopefully taking chances of your own.
I know the statto types like to move the goalposts but "taking the positives" from an 8-2 beating is, for me, several bridges too far.

Our U23s were playing, no teamsheet available but likely that the two best U18 players were in the squad, possibly more U18s making up the squad

Our U18s also played, probably with reduced strength.

That's all quite a stretch of our young playing resources at U18 and U23. Let's see how the season settles down for both U18s and U23s players.

Kenwright out...

Obviously losing 8-2 is shocking. Presumably it's a new team bedding in after lots of promotions to the U23s.

Man City have a good youth set up although they haven't figured out how to turn it into first team footballers (except Foden).

We won't get beaten 8-2 every week though – and hopefully a few future stars will emerge too.

When the season settles down, I think the U18s will have quite a few youngsters in the squad aged 16, so the team that played yesterday could have included a few of these and even kids still at school. It was a friendly so the result wasn't the end of the world, although the score was huge. Let's see who played!!

I know it's more important to develop players and winning isn't everything at that age but 8-2 is a bad result.

Hopefully it was a very young team and some players got to realise they have lots of work ahead to become good players.

Let’s get the facts, before passing judgement. It’s easy to put the boot in, but let’s find out what happened and focus our hopes positively for EFC.

Also the main goal of the academy is not to win. It is to produce players who can be sold or can be used for the first team. There are multiple examples of players who won loads at youth level but failed at senior and vice versa so I don’t see any great evidence that a winning habit is gained or loss as easily as you suggest. Is it not equally possible that winning may breed complacency and losing build resilience or determination? Seems to me it depends on the player and the coaching.

Not sure what football fantasy has to do with it or is that just a handy stick to beat someone with who has an opinion you disagree with?

But... the majority of U18s will not make it to be professional players, never mind Premier League class. That's just how it is.

What's more important is player development, win, lose or draw. It's reacting in a positive way and never giving up.

I've no idea how the game went but the positives are we scored 2 goals against a good team. Learn from the mistakes and go again.

U23s are obviously a more important benchmark in that more players will make a profession from the game.

But I would not be surprised if the first team took just as big a whipping against an elite team as Man City. I'm not being negative just realistic given Barca's recent thrashing as evidence. It's like heavyweight boxing, one lucky hit is all it takes sometimes.

I would look at it as a whole. Obviously the purpose of the Academy is to bring players on... but it has to be much more than that if it is to generate future winners in the Premier League. It seems daft to have to point out that actually playing games is an essential part of that advancement.

And, whatever you say, you will not shift me from the very firm belief that it is better for the development of those players to be winning those games rather than losing them. It's a game you play primarily to win.

It seems equally obvious that winning trophies is even better – your idea of winning "breeding complacency" is just the other side of a coin that has "building confidence" written in bigger letters on the other side.

Is there any evidence that winning trophies somehow interferes with (rather than contributes to) players' progression? I would rather believe there is no correlation because there is only such a tiny minority of these players who actually come through anyway, as it depends upon so many other factors.

Beating up the Academy managers for winning trophies just seems utterly crazy to me. I'm sorry but believing that losing all their games will somehow help them to develop good players for the Premier League or selling on is equally complete nonsense.

Sometimes the U18s are dragged along by one player, eg, Wayne Rooney was the star, and what a star of the youth team that got to the FA Youth Cup final, but lost. I can't think of any other player who made it into the first team from that year.

Michael Symes is the only one I can remember who made a good career from football playing in various teams in the lower leagues, after Bryan Robson gave him a start at Bradford City.

Michael was a striker and Moyes let him go although Duncan Ferguson asked him to keep him on and he offered to pay his wages, but the dour one refused.

Neither is anyone “beating up academy managers for winning trophies”.

It's not the winning that is the issue, it is when winning is being prioritized instead of player development. It seems to me that there may have been times in the past where older players were given game time even when it was clear they had no future at or utility for the club. The likes of Harry Charsley springs to mind. When younger players might have benefited from more game time.

The point I and others have made is that our U18 and U23 teams will likely have younger average ages this year. As a result we'll probably lose more matches. But the youngsters who are good enough will have stepped sooner, which may hopefully get them productive loans or opportunities with the first team sooner. Crucially, young talent will be getting more opportunity between the ages of 17 and 19.

Of course winning at any level is nice. And we want these players to learn how to win. But no academy is judged on its trophies, it's judged on the players that it produces to help on and off the pitch. I like Unsworth a lot and think he's done a great job but I do think there are times when he has prioritised winning by using older players. It seems that may be getting addressed this year.

Most players at all the big clubs at whatever age are skillful and fit. The most important thing is confidence and learning the importance of the team first and not being a fancy Dan, showing off your skills to the trainer.

I haven't seen the game or the team so can't really comment on that game except to say getting beat 8-2 is not healthy for any young footballer.

I imagine the result will be rationalised in the way first team failure is with platitudes and middle management twaddle glossing over the unnerving evidence that the club is drifting to the abyss at every level.

However, Broadhead played because the main striker, Simms played for the first team. So Unsworth held back the 22-year-old and sent on the 19-year-old. Note the 22-year-old started up top with a 17-year-old, who would have learnt from that experience of a pro who's played proper league football.

If Unsworth has picked the 19-year -old and we'd sent the 22-year-old on for the first team, then it'd make Unsworth look better and nullify your argument. So who would you prefer to have got minutes on Saturday for the firsts? Simms or Broadhead?

As for Charsley, he played when needed due to injuries. He bumped up the average age, but it was necessary to play him. What's the alternative, stunt Ellis's growth because he has a poor quality 17-year-old trying to supply him? Better to develop Simms by using a League One standard player. You can't develop 11 youth players each season, 2 or 3 will do. If you really want to develop them, then you need to use filler to improve the team quality to allow the players you are trying to develop to actually develop.

For example, imagine we picked a team of 18-year-olds for the U23s and they were under the cosh all the time, how's that developing their ball skills? If you can get a few older but better players in to help you compete, then our boys can actually play better football and so develop.

Michael is right.

If Everton had a 17-year-old up front playing for the U23s, whilst the U18s were getting trounced, then it does look like the mantra might have changed a bit?

We all like to win, four of our younger players won the World Cup three years ago, whilst another was injured, and another rested because he'd just been playing in the Premier League, so it looks like Everton do very well up to a point.

I think Martinez would have made an unbelievably good youth team manager, and he said the problem in England seems to be in the 18-21 bracket.

Hopefully Brands is changing this? The German Under-21 team that beat England in the last major tournament at that age had so much more first team experience than their English counterparts, mostly in the German second division. I'd bet a pound to a penny that it's the real competitive football that brings these players on.

In 16-17, when we won the PL2, we had the 19th youngest average age out of 24 teams. In 17-18 it was the 17th youngest. In 18-19 when we won again it was the 19th youngest.

So not a myth then. Repeatedly over three seasons having one of the oldest squads.

You say that being picked with older (better?) players helps the youngsters develop better but where is the proof of that? Perhaps those older players end up demanding more of the ball? Certainly not enough players from these winning teams have gone on to make significant money for the club or to win things (or even improve things) for the first team. So I'm not quite sure how you can say Michael is right as though it were fact. It's a matter of opinion.

Ultimately the thing that matters (rather than the results) is the players churned out. In the last 5 years, the highlights have been the likes of Holgate, Davies, Dowell, Kenny, Gordon and Calvert-Lewin. These players alone justify the academy and speak well of Unsworth though I'd say the production line pales in comparison to the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool. Perhaps inevitable as a result of those clubs' resources but also noticeable that most of those clubs fielded younger teams than us over last 4 years in the PL2.

It will be interesting to see whether this change of strategy bears more fruit over the next 5 years than the last 5 years.