A while back, a friend told me about a book he'd read by a former City scout, Len Davies. We ended up having a lengthy discussion about the productivity of City's youth system since the mid-1970s, and Stevie Ireland's comments on his departure from the club this week prompted me to think about the issue once more. I decided to track the MCFC youth development programme down the years.
The ultimate test of a youth system is its output: it exists to produce players for the first team, so the key questions are whether it does and, if so, how many come through. To that end, while an inside view is obviously valuable, it's possible to review the output of the youth system in a fairly objective way.
There's no doubt that, in these terms, the City youth policy was successful in the mid and late 1970s. My first season watching City was 1975/6, and the successful League Cup team that season featured future England international Peter Barnes, plus Gerard Keegan and, as an unused substitute, Kenny Clements, all players playing in their first full season. That term, Paul Power and Gary Owen also made their debuts. In the next couple of years, Roger Palmer, Dave Bennett and Ray Ranson also broke through. All of these players raised transfer fees for the club in the fullness of time, substantial in the case of Owen and Barnes, and some gave the Blues long and distinguished service into the bargain.
The success story continued as the decade drew to its close. Not only did City reach the club's first ever FA Youth Cup finals in 1979 and 1980, but more players came through who would play in the senior side: Tommy Caton and Nicky Reid both featured in the senior FA Cup competition, and the former brought in a substantial transfer fee when eventually sold, as did Clive Wilson. Alex Williams, Andy May and Steve Kinsey also made the first team and played in 365 league games between them. (In addition, Gary Bennett had a long career in the game but was released by City without having made the senior side, and Steve MacKenzie played in the 1980 Youth Cup final, but, as an expensive Malcolm Allison buy, can't really be seen as a product of our own youth system. Midfielder Gary Buckley was also in the youth system at the time, and, after playing a handful of senior games, moved on to the lower leagues for a small fee).
There's no doubt that the quality of the output in the first half of the 1980s dipped substantially. Between 1982 and 1984, the players making their debuts would have come into the club as apprentices or YTS trainees in or after 1980. Of those players, only Paul Simpson brought in a significant fee and showed any promise in the first team. Jamie Hoyland only managed a handful of games for City, but did have a long professional career and played in the top flight for Sheffield United. Full back Geoff Lomax made some unconvincing appearances in the seniors before drifting out of the professional game via the lower divisions. The only other home grown products to feature, Gary Jackson, Andy Elliott and Ronnie Hildersley, made ten league appearances between them.
By this time, I'd become a regular spectator at reserve and youth games, and I recall that most devotees of the City junior sides blamed John Bond's changes to the youth system, particularly coaching and scouting personnel, for the quite obvious decline. Youth coach Steve Fleet and long time City favourite Dave Ewing, the reserve team boss, were both highly rated, both long term servants of the club and were widely regarded as having been shabbily treated; from memory, I think the club later invited them back to work in the Platt Lane complex.
When Billy McNeill took over as City manager in 1983, the Scot dispensed with the services of the previous youth team coach, Bond's appointee John Ryan, his former full back at Norwich, and at Maine Road, as a brief stop gap in 1982. Tony Book had returned to the club as reserve team coach after being shown the door along with Malcolm Allison in 1980, and his former full back partner Glyn Pardoe was drafted in to work with him. Each of the two men shared a joint job designation as "Reserve and Youth Team Coaches", and there's no doubt that the quality of the players under their charge from mid-1980s onwards took a sharp turn for the better. This may also have been helped by the fact that McNeill (a much underrated City manager in my opinion), having understood that the club's financial state was far more parlous than he'd realised when electing to move to the club from Celtic, had put a real accent on youth development.
Certainly, the scouting and coaching team of Barnes, Book and Pardoe seems to have made an impression on some of the young players who came through the system when they were in charge. Here are Ian Brightwell and Paul Lake, quoted by the Manchester Evening News in November 2007:
Brightwell, who played in over 300 senior games for the club, enthused: "There was a holy trinity we all listened to: Tony Book, or as we used to call him 'Skip,' Glynn Pardoe and chief scout Ken Barnes." Lake, who promised so much in a career cut short to only 104 games, said: "Those three talked from the same hymn sheet. Ken Barnes would just say 'go out and express yourself' and what I remember from Glynn Pardoe was his constant refrain `if you can't pass, you can't play this game'."
In 1986, City won the FA Youth Cup for the first time in their history, having been favourites the previous year only to be edged out unluckily by eventual winners Newcastle United, whose team featured one Paul Gascoigne. The bulk of the 1985 team comprised the squad that landed the trophy the next year, though Darren Beckford and Earl Barrett, two players sold on by City when still young but who later made Premiership careers (and, in Barrett's case, a brief England career too) for themselves, were no longer eligible.
The 1986 side was immensely productive for the club. It boasted two future England internationals, in the form of Andy Hinchcliffe and David White, while Paul Lake would surely have played for the national team had injury not intervened. Ian Brightwell and Steve Redmond gave long service to the club, while Paul Moulden was sold for a healthy fee after showing considerable initial promise (which was never subsequently realised). Ian Scott didn't play much for the senior team, but also departed to Stoke for a substantial fee of £175,000. For the sake of completeness, Andy Thackeray and substitute Steve Macaulay both left City without playing a first team game, both enjoyed long careers in the lower leagues.
To produce as many first team players as the 1985 and 1986 youth set ups did and eventually realise in aggregate over GBP 3.5 million in transfer fees. To put this in perspective relative to other fees at the time, the record transfer fee paid by a British club exceeded this figure only in the summer of 1993, when Manchester United paid Nottingham Forest GBP 3.7 million for Roy Keane.
But the success of the mid-1980s youth teams wasn't a one off, though it was the pinnacle for City's youth system, at least until the recent success of Jim Cassell's Academy. In the next couple of years, Jason Beckford and Paul Warhurst came through (the latter, though he never played for the City senior side, going on to earn himself a Premiership winner's medal) and then, in 1989, City again reached the FA Youth Cup final. This time, we lost in extra time to a Watford side whose most impressive player was future City and England goalkeeper David James. Of this slightly less impressive crop than their predecessors from three years earlier, only Michael Hughes and Mike Sheron really broke through into the senior side. However, three players eventually found success elsewhere: Ashley Ward, Gerry Taggart and Neil Lennon all enjoyed Premiership careers. In addition to them, Martyn Margetson remained for several years as, primarily, a reserve goalkeeper, Mike Quigley and Ian Thompstone featured briefly for the seniors before being released and Mark Peters had a long career in the lower divisions.
It should also be taken into account that, within the youth system at the time of the 1989 final, was a certain Garry Flitcroft (as well as David Brightwell, who also made the first team). So in the wake of the 1986 success, City continued to produce several players of sufficient quality to enjoy careers in the top flight, and the youth system also generated almost GBP 5 million of transfer fees. To talk of a serious decline at this point, then, was surely premature. The success of the 1986 side wasn't repeated, of course, but that was a one off: to expect similar every couple of years simply wasn't realistic.
It's when one examines what happened with players coming into the youth system from 1990 onwards that the notion of a decline becomes striking. Seventeen such players made their debuts for City before the introduction of the first Academy product, Shaun Wright-Phillips, in October 1999. Of those, four played over 100 senior games for City: Steve Lomas featured for us mainly in the top flight, before moving to West Ham for GBP 2 million; Richard Edghill was with us for almost nine years after his senior debut, and was still playing professionally, albeit in League Two several seasons later; Michael Brown, fifteen years after his Premiership debut, was until last season still employed by a club at that level; and Jeff Whitley figured in City and Sunderland sides that won promotion to the top flight but lacked the quality to prosper there.
None of the other names, though some of them are still playing in lower or less heralded leagues, has ever gone on to make a significant impact in, as opposed to earn a living from, the game. For the record, that list reads: Adie Mike, David Kerr, John Foster, Rae Ingram, Jim Whitley, Lee Crooks, Chris Greenacre, Ray Kelly, David Morley, Gary Mason, Nick Fenton, Steve Rimmer and Alan Bailey. Looking at these fourteen names, together with those of the four 1990s youth players who did actually manage 100 games for the club, it's difficult not to be struck by the significant dip in quality of the output as a whole when compared with most of the fifteen years or so prior to 1990.
So the question is why? What happened? I don't know for sure I suspect that the biggest factor was that Alex Ferguson - who was reportedly furious when he arrived at United to find City so dominant in the market for young players - had put United's house in order. Suddenly our competition for young talent was the greater, as United aggressively fought back against our position of dominance, and they acquired the signature of more than one player reportedly regarded by City as destined for Maine Road. Ryan Giggs is probably the obvious example. Whether City's inability to respond resulted from a failure to identify the threat sufficiently early, complacency or a lack of funding at a level to enable us to compete, I don't know. However, the fact that, once we'd lost our preeminence we were unable to retrieve it despite the various changes in personnel referred to by Len Davies, is no surprise in that it reflects the shambolic running of the club as a whole throughout most of the 1990s.
To be fair to Francis Lee, whose chairmanship can properly be the subject of much criticism, he first sanctioned the push for Academy status even though money was tight. Meanwhile David Bernstein and his board refused to jettison it when the cash was even more desperately needed elsewhere following relegation to the third tier. When one looks at the recent sets of the club's published accounts and reflects where City might now be but for the GBP 25 million plus profit from the Academy , that's cause to be thankful to both former chairmen.
Of course, now the club's horizons have been so radically expanded that the Academy as was - so crucial to the club in the pre-ADUG era - has been overhauled to meet the club's revised ambitions. It's sure to benefit from the best of facilities, but whether it'll be successful remains to be seen. That, though, is a discussion for another day.
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