CONFIRMED Kacper Lopata leaves for Southend

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Keen Blade said:
One more injury at CB and Lopata will be in the squad
Bash looked shaky in the air tonight
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He did but in fairness first game for a while and Luton are a top outfit in their sphere. He’ll be better for this match and an important cog in the coming months in defence and even midfield perhaps.
 

N20 Blade said:
He did but in fairness first game for a while and Luton are a top outfit in their sphere. He’ll be better for this match and an important cog in the coming months in defence and even midfield perhaps.
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Unfortunately I think he was looking suspect in the air for large spells after Xmas last season. There’s a reason Anel was bought. Don’t think PH has any intention of using Bash in midfield either, which I think is the right decision.

Shame as I, alongside thousands of others, have great respect and admiration for a top bloke.
 
EddieColquhoun said:


Not bad for an "Academy Blocking Club".
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What's your general view on what has happened?

For eg...
Better quality youngsters?
Necessity, as injuries etc have made us dig deep?
Deliberate policy to try youngsters rather than juggle square pegs & round holes?
Other?
 
N'Diayewillalwaysloveyou said:
Maybe under Wilder they were but not under king Hecky.
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I think under Wilder it was much harder for young players to even make the first team squad nevermind get game time. Brooks is the only player that springs to mind under Wilder's time in charge but as others have argued we had a very settled first team for the majority of Wilder's time in charge. The were senior players left out who could be barely get a kick of the ball not just the young lads.

That said Wilder did oversee the appointment of Hecky, Lester and Del Boy who have coached and brought a lot of these youngsters through to the first team. Wilder despite it not being number 1 priority at the time due to COVID was still pushing for our facilities to be upgraded so hopefully one day we get the academy rating we need going forward.
 
Its pretty simple I think. We wont loan him unless he signs a contract. The contract offered is deemed not good enough, probably by his agent. Plus he doesnt want to be tied to a club where he has very little chance of playing and who will demand a fee if someone else wants him if he does well on loan.

Hes decided he is going to sit around for a year and sign for div one or two club in the summer, get a signing on fee and have a chance of putting himself in the shop window for a bigger club move.
 
Ball_Sup (Phil) said:
What's your general view on what has happened?

For eg...
Better quality youngsters?
Necessity, as injuries etc have made us dig deep?
Deliberate policy to try youngsters rather than juggle square pegs & round holes?
Other?
Click to expand...
Playing this with a straight bat, I think it's an element of all those things.

I'm not a regular watcher of the age group teams like yourself and others on here, but when I do see them we now seem to be producing different 'types' of youngsters. Some with pace, some with height, some with skill, some with power and some with a combination of these tools. When I watched a little more of the younger lads when I did still live in Sheffield we seemed to produce a lot of 'okay' players with rounded attributes but no stand out athletes (Seriki, Jebbison), and rarely (Diego aside of course) any players with the skill, craft and pace of players like N'Diaye and hopefully Osula. We had a lot of young players who were good at u21/23 level such as Jake Wright, Jordan Hallam and others, but looking at them objectively I always thought they were lacking that extra to make them a higher end football league player.

There's also a point in the past that we did sell some of our more promising youngsters to fund the first team such as Calvert-Lewin and Ramsdale however we've just done this again with Lankshear. It was fruitful for us with the former two as it funded our double promotion but time will tell on the latter, though I would assume without knowing he wanted to go as he seems an exceptional talent for his age.

I think as you say injuries are another huge part of the puzzle. Under Wilder we sent out 9/10 of the same starting 11 week after week with remarkable ability to keep them all fit. Since the last PL season and even more so after last year's pre-season under Slav we've struggled with injuries more than I can ever remember which is always likely to open doors for academy players.

The final point is of course in the mind of the manager. Wilder looked to the shorter term goal (quite rightly at the time) of getting us out of League One and then keep up that momentum to get us into the Premier League. Blooding younger players always carries a risk factor against results and I think CW didn't want to take that chance. The downside of course is that such a rapid rise is unsustainable without considering the future and people will now rightly question the choice to spend £23.5m on a largely unproven Liverpool striker over spending half of that on a proven Championship number 9 and rotating in Ili N'Diaye who CW seemed to largely ignore. As soon as a few injuries hit under Wilder our back up players simply weren't up to the task and having blooded no youngsters over a 3 year period Wilder didn't have any aces in the pack to turn to.

Hecky seems to have got the unreserved backing of the board to do it his way and is also doing a very good job of getting us more than competitive at the top end whilst bringing in the younger lads when he feels it is appropriate.

I think the chances of all or even some of these lads making it at this level and the one above is slim as always but SUFC is a good place to be at the moment with an ever broadening pathway to the first team. On the flip side I think CW chose a shorter term approach to try and bring that immediate success and without looking into his management history in depth I'd guess he's done that wherever he goes.

Reading all that back perhaps the question comes more down to 'What benefit is there to a manager trying to create a pathway when they are likely to be out of a job if the first team suffers a run of defeats as a result?'
 
EddieColquhoun said:


Not bad for an "Academy Blocking Club".
Click to expand...


N'Diayewillalwaysloveyou said:
Maybe under Wilder they were but not under king Hecky.
Click to expand...

The article doesn't name the players but i think these are them (in no particular order)

  1. Ndiaye (Hecky)
  2. Hackford (Wilder)
  3. Jebbison (Hecky)
  4. Arblaster (Hecky)
  5. Amissah (Hecky)
  6. Osula (Hecky)
  7. Lopata (Slav)
  8. Brunt (Slav)
  9. Gordon (Slav)
  10. Smith (Slav)
  11. Norrington-Davies (Slav)
  12. Seriki (Hecky)
So i think we can see which manager was "blocking".

I remember the following youth players breaking through under Wilder:
  • Brooks
  • Slater
  • Eastwood
 
None of those players were ready under Wilder so it's a moot point. We had DCL, Eastwood, Ramsdale, Slater, Hackford, Jebbison, Brooks and Slater. They all got game time despite only one of them (Brooks) being ready for regular first team games at the level we were at (his involvement was curtailed by glandular fever). I personally feel that we missed a trick with Slater under Hecky. Exactly the type we've been missing for the last two seasons and good enough to at least be a squad player at this level imo.
 

nopigfansintown said:
None of those players were ready under Wilder so it's a moot point. We had DCL, Eastwood, Ramsdale, Slater, Hackford, Jebbison, Brooks and Slater. They all got game time despite only one of them (Brooks) being ready for regular first team games at the level we were at (his involvement was curtailed by glandular fever). I personally feel that we missed a trick with Slater under Hecky. Exactly the type we've been missing for the last two seasons and good enough to at least be a squad player at this level imo.
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The way we handled Slater was weird he was in and around the first team for years and yet got no minutes and wasn’t loaned out even when we had a lot of depth in that position which resulted in him getting no football and not getting the chance to kick on. I really hope we don’t do the same with Arblaster.
 
nopigfansintown said:
None of those players were ready under Wilder so it's a moot point. We had DCL, Eastwood, Ramsdale, Slater, Hackford, Jebbison, Brooks and Slater. They all got game time despite only one of them (Brooks) being ready for regular first team games at the level we were at (his involvement was curtailed by glandular fever). I personally feel that we missed a trick with Slater under Hecky. Exactly the type we've been missing for the last two seasons and good enough to at least be a squad player at this level imo.
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Ben Whiteman may have been another.
 
mattbianco1 said:
The article doesn't name the players but i think these are them (in no particular order)

  1. Ndiaye (Hecky)
  2. Hackford (Wilder)
  3. Jebbison (Hecky)
  4. Arblaster (Hecky)
  5. Amissah (Hecky)
  6. Osula (Hecky)
  7. Lopata (Slav)
  8. Brunt (Slav)
  9. Gordon (Slav)
  10. Smith (Slav)
  11. Norrington-Davies (Slav)
  12. Seriki (Hecky)
So i think we can see which manager was "blocking".

I remember the following youth players breaking through under Wilder:
  • Brooks
  • Slater
  • Eastwood
Click to expand...
Was only a decent England performance that caused him to recall Brooks from his Chesterfield loan. He'd have never had a look in either if it wasn't for the rave reviews.
 
Tarqs said:
Was only a decent England performance that caused him to recall Brooks from his Chesterfield loan. He'd have never had a look in either if it wasn't for the rave reviews.
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I think he was persuaded by others at the club (can't remember who, but think AK and whoever was academy boss at the time) to have a look at him before sending him out as well.
 
So playing well got him into the first team? Sounds alright to me.
 
mattbianco1 said:
The article doesn't name the players but i think these are them (in no particular order)

  1. Ndiaye (Hecky)
  2. Hackford (Wilder)
  3. Jebbison (Hecky)
  4. Arblaster (Hecky)
  5. Amissah (Hecky)
  6. Osula (Hecky)
  7. Lopata (Slav)
  8. Brunt (Slav)
  9. Gordon (Slav)
  10. Smith (Slav)
  11. Norrington-Davies (Slav)
  12. Seriki (Hecky)
So i think we can see which manager was "blocking".

I remember the following youth players breaking through under Wilder:
  • Brooks
  • Slater
  • Eastwood
Click to expand...
This is classic football club behaviour. Of those 12 only 2 so far have made it as proper full time pros. The other 10 are so far unproven beyond a couple of appearances.

Clubs and their academies need to show they they are a success so playing a few academy boys in cup games and off the bench in a league games boosts the numbers. It also means if any club is sniffing around them we can demand a bigger fee as they are a first team player.

I would bet a large sum of.money that no more than one out of Hackford, Jebbison and Osula going on to have a successful career despite all of them being 'feted' as the next DCL at some point.
 
FriethBlade said:
This is classic football club behaviour. Of those 12 only 2 so far have made it as proper full time pros. The other 10 are so far unproven beyond a couple of appearances.

Clubs and their academies need to show they they are a success so playing a few academy boys in cup games and off the bench in a league games boosts the numbers. It also means if any club is sniffing around them we can demand a bigger fee as they are a first team player.

I would bet a large sum of.money that no more than one out of Hackford, Jebbison and Osula going on to have a successful career despite all of them being 'feted' as the next DCL at some point.
Click to expand...
Define successful career.
 
Rumours dribbling out of Twitter Accounts of Kacper being off to Śląsk Wrocław of the Polish Prem......
 

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