Tractor-Boys.com

Thought this was quite a thorough piece and would interested to hear what others thought of it.

To read you have to subscribe but you can quit within a week and pay nothing

https://theathletic.co.uk/1653901/2020/ ... n-academy/

No need to subscribe as realize enough how we've fallen away and little they could feature that you're not already witness to. Maybe sad is the operative word here but this is reality. Sometimes take a look in on the Pink Un message board and often a mention to how a number of posts (invariably from TWTD) about past (glorious) histories and accomplishment. For a moment you can feel some anger before you realize they're correct in what they say. They've put together far more than we have since leaving the EPL in 2002, how many years in the top league compared to ourselves, you can't really dispute.

I think teams like ourselves i.e. Forest, Derby possibly Leeds, look back on the 1970's and accept while they were outstanding times and produced stellar teams it's something that can never be replicated. Do they live in the past I don't know, not teams I got an interest in. Point being it's about present time and future ambition, something we ourselves possess a clear void of right now. In truth it's been this way for some considerable time going back to Sheepshanks and Royle / Burley. We seem to do well around the turn of a new decade if past years are anything to go by but on this occasion, feel skeptical something (or any) good can come out of it.

I think part of the issue is clubs can't hang on to their good young players, Premiership clubs are always on the lookout to draw them away and put them into the lower reaches of their club system, maybe even loaning them out, and then, after they don't live up to their expectations, they are let go, instead of them developing into true club players from the initial clubs youth system.