not to sure where to place this but think this is a very interesting article
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2718752-brentf...
A different market then ours so probably not the correct call to ditch the academy but interesting
Yeah, very interesting. Brentford currently 5th this year in the Championship too and potentially not far off being involved in promotion battle.
Are players like Piscopo, Davila and Steinmann all 'Brentford types' of one kind or another (ie, clearly talented, but for one reason or another haven't had their break)?
Davila too old if we're going by the article, Steinmann potentially too.
The article has two paragraphs that talk about not being preoccupied about a players age and about picking up late developers using Vardy as an example in a caption. Then a few paragraphs later goes on about only focusing on youth. And yet later talks about their approach being vidicated by one of their teams picking up Tim Sparv (who was 27) and then contradicts itself again about not wanting to sign older players. It's a bit confused.
By late developers I think they mean not giving up on young players too early - they give an example along the lines of, 'just because someone doesn't fully make it at 21 doesn't mean you should automatically give up on them as they may turn out to be a late bloomer.'
On the other hand they also talk about treating players as financial assets who need to bring value to the club when they leave, and again give an example of not wanting to bring in a 29-year old striker because his re-sale value would not be worth it for the club.
The Sparv example was only an illustration of where value can be got (i.e. which leagues to look at for good players at low cost) rather than direct example of Brentford's policy