Curle has said he will not hand out first team opportunities to the club's star youth team for the "sake of it" should we retain our league status. It wouldn't be for the sake of it, however, because he would be giving opportunities to assets of the football club. Ones that could potentially be at the football club a lot longer than he will given the shelf life of managers. Ones that are very good value in terms of wages.
What he's missing is that scouts from higher leagues may see things in our youth players that he doesn't and he is effectively keeping them out of the shop window.
Instead he talks about his favoured senior players and "potential watching suitors", whether this means selling players who have flattered to deceive this term for a profit or simply shifting them off the payroll is hard to determine but any interested parties will have had 3 quarters of season to frame any interest.
Down at Exeter the youth team are mixed with first the first team in training and they have made massive profits on young players that may easily have not seen the light of day elsewhere. Is there something in the water down in Devon which makes their kids better than ours? No they are just coached and managed better in becoming successful senior pros.
The serious injury to Sean Whaler may show the potential downside to sending players down into the depths of non-league, there were some very naughty tackles in that Banbury game with the club complaining about the leniency of the refereeing.
Regarding Joe he has one very important thing in his favour and that is being a goal-scorer, notch a couple in League 2 even tap in and your value increased almost with each goal. You can say no-one from higher up came in for him (probably with no facts to back it up) but in reality why would someone from the Conference North come in for a player that has not been given the benefit of minutes at League 2 level?
Again it boils down to the problematic setup of a manager with a potentially short shelf life trying to impose his way of doing things onto a football club. It's like us ordering a 5 course meal in a restaurant we may have to leave in 10 minutes.
Some good points, unfortunately until we are in aposition where the club is looking to the long term and not just survival then we will always be in that position. What I would like to see is something along the lines of the Exeter set up where the Youth and first team train together and everyone at the club has the same goal in mind, not just short term success but a long term model for the club going forward. We need owners and a management team that can see progression right through from a young age to established first team players here and not somewhere else. This is why I think the trust looking at various models of ownership is a good thing as we can look at a long term vision for the club. I would love to see a management team come in and be here for a lot of years, similar to what Dario Grady did at Crewe but to do that we need everyone on board and not just worried about 1 season of success.