This is where patience comes in. To sign a player of Ndiaye's current calibre would set you back £30mil+ now. But he didn't cost us that back when we found him.
We signed him as future potential with a view of developing him to a first team player over 2-3 seasons, and that is exactly what happened.
This is exactly what the new owners are trying to do with the three new wingers. Who says they won't all potentially turn into the next Ndiaye in 2-3 years time.
We'll still need players in the interim until they're ready so not all recruitment will be AI led.
The American Way is to plan what your team in 3 seasons time might look like now and the team for the season after that. Start building and developing now and promotion may need to be sacrificed in the short term in the name of progressing and improving players.
We've seen more success in doing this with players like David Brooks and Iliman Ndiaye than we have done producing players from scratch in the academy. Phil Jagielka, Michael Tonge, Nick Montgomery, Stephen Quinn and the latter two, all labelled as our "academy products," when in reality we picked them up from other clubs academies, stuck them in ours for a season before they made the first team. Even Matt Lowton was only in our academy for three seasons before making the first team. Sydie Peck is another example.
Our academy has seen some results such as Walker, Naughton, Maguire, Ramsdale and Arblaster are all self produced players.