Champions League - Chelsea out, Celtic in, Messi stretched off.

...and United lose at home!

City didn't even make the Europa League. All that money and not a pot to piss in.

How bad is the messi injury ?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Twitter from the club - Messi has a bruise on the outside of his left knee. He'll undergo further tests to determine the exact extent of the injury."

Watched Celtic and they were magnificent - back to the form where they beat Barca. Samaras was excellent but the thing is that they are competing in Europe with a squad of relatively inexpensive players that has been assembled wisely and over a few years. They have a solid defence and a combative midfield with good campaigners like Scott Brown and a decent mix of low cost foreign players and local talent.

Admire their signings policy which ideally complements their youth set up and they are a good example of restrained and astute budget management - a model we should be paying more attention to.

wanderlust wrote:Watched Celtic and they were magnificent - back to the form where they beat Barca. Samaras was excellent but the thing is that they are competing in Europe with a squad of relatively inexpensive players that has been assembled wisely and over a few years. They have a solid defence and a combative midfield with good campaigners like Scott Brown and a decent mix of low cost foreign players and local talent.

Admire their signings policy which ideally complements their youth set up and they are a good example of restrained and astute budget management - a model we should be paying more attention to.

I agree on the youth model, however...

this will never work for us.

Look at celtic (and rangers before they went pop) - they were the 'big' Scottish clubs, the equivalent of the Salford scum and Chelsea etc here. all parents usually want their child to attend the academy of a big club - so clubs like the Salford red sox and Celtic get to pick from the best young talent. other clubs get the dregs...

If a player does turn out to be any good, he gets poached by one of the big clubs anyway...

that's why I dont think investing all this money in the BWFC academy was wise - we are never going to attract the right players, and if we do by chance unearth a superstar... he will bugger off...

The same thing happened at Everton with Rooney. The big clubs have got their feelers out everywhere on the lookout for young prospects. Signing kids as young as 10 or 11 by tempting their parents with hard cash.

This is why I think there should be something in place to help level out the playing field.

A system has to be put in place to help out the lower league clubs from having their good young players nicked off them from the big teams. A big part of is agents who turn the young lads heads with fame and fortune if they move from a club like rochdale to the likes of city and united.

I don't get it?

The players are bought by these bigger teams though so if we did manage to develop a young prospects we could get £5-10 mill from a top club, just look at the value of Zaha, that lets us invest in our future. And at the moment were a club in the position to reject low offers.

There are plenty of small clubs who make massive profits from their youth system, Watford got 11.5 million for young, and we just gave them 3.5 for Sordell. And they have all the competition of the London clubs to deal with!


If your youth set up is good enough then any club can bring in decent prospects.

Lofty_Love wrote:I don't get it?

The players are bought by these bigger teams though so if we did manage to develop a young prospects we could get £5-10 mill from a top club, just look at the value of Zaha, that lets us invest in our future. And at the moment were a club in the position to reject low offers.

There are plenty of small clubs who make massive profits from their youth system, Watford got 11.5 million for young, and we just gave them 3.5 for Sordell. And they have all the competition of the London clubs to deal with!


If your youth set up is good enough then any club can bring in decent prospects.

Lofty does make a valid point. Why do so few from our academy seem to make successes of their careers ?

IMO you can have the best youth set up in the world but if all the big north west clubs are snapping up all the best talent before we have a chance to sign them then we are left with the bottom of the barrel players.

The thing with bolton is we are situated next to some of the best clubs in the country, Liverpool, United, City and to an extent Everton, so if you offered a good young player to play for one of the previous clubs or us then IMO 9 times out of 10 they will pick someone else.

That does make sense and its true in a lot of cases - it is certainly harder for us than other teams, but players won't necessarily look any good at 12-15, unless they are some wonderkid. Most will go unnoticed by other clubs

Kevin Nolan only came to our trial day because his mate invited him.

Depending on how good the youth system is the same player could turn out good or crap, when Coyle first came in charge one of the instructions to Jimmy was to start getting youth products. I think that dividing line is pretty noticeable now, three years later, our 18 year olds, the new lot from the new regime are flying, and the U21 are shite - looks like its purely a result of improving our youth system, guess thats one plus Coyle gave to us...

I think coaches can tell even at 12-15 if a young lad has potential to make it IMO, the good coaches/scouts can anyway. Though you do hear of stories where players got released from a certain club but a few years later get snapped up by someone else and go on to make it at a good level.

I thought we got Nolan from Liverpools academy set up?

I do agree with you on our current youth set up under Jimmy, we are producing some decent players in comparison to what we were a few years ago, but IMO we still are getting average young players, no offence to Joe Riley or Vela but I can't see them demanding a value of Zaha in the coming years.

I agree with you there, far too much hype is made about Vela and Riley on here.

But as shown with Zaha scouts of the top clubs aren't going to notice every single young prospect around, with a good academy and scouts you can make a good players come through the youth system.

My point on the 12-15 years olds is that there is no way a scout would know how good they will be in 8 years time at that age unless they were amazing, a few promising 12-15 year olds who look to be pretty good and are athletic, put through the right youth system can turn into far far better players than the equivalent put through a poor system - that was my point on that.

This is a subject I've rabbited on about in the past because it's not a level playing field when it comes to attracting young talent and the likes of Manure have their tentacles out in every continent. Each year they take on loads - and also dump loads. Clubs like ours don't have the pulling power. The one saving grace is that there are late maturers who are not necessarily obvious world class but good enough at premiership level. The problem is that they're wise to it. When a player is borderline, they tend to loan them out (so they don't even have to pay their wages) and if they come good they either haul them back in or offer to sell them to the host club. Still, Manure rejects like Robbie Savage have always been able to do a job and make a living.