I watched a lot of the EDS last year, it was actually quite an enjoyable experience on the whole, despite Harlington being one of the coldest places on earth. It’s good ground for me a I look to get some experience as a journalist and I find talking to the young lads easy as we’re pratically the same age.
It’s come to a point now, where I think investment is needed in the youth and scouting setup. But it has to be proper investment. Unfortunately the majority of the lads in the EDS last year won’t go on to have a career in the game. That’s the harsh truth of it. Hopefully some might make good League 1 or Championship players.
Towards the back end of last year the likes of Sam Magri and Emmanuel Monthe were sent out on loan to get some experience playing first team football, Magri went to Nuneaton Town and Monthe to Southport. Hardly players that you would call on for the first-team.
Even the best players that are currently in the setup (the Petrassos, Ehmers and Sutherlands), aren’t good enough to make it into a Premier League squad, so something needs to change.
There was a lot of clamour for Mike Petrasso to be involved towards the end of last season. But as a well respected former player once said to me: “You can’t just throw the players in, if it doesn’t go well for them it could ruin them. But are they really good enough, or are we just holding onto that belief because they are all we have?”
The Canadian is a pretty good example of this. Is he really good enough? He is without doubt an exciting young player and at one stage he could have gone elsewhere when his contract was up. We are in a far stronger position with him, but realistically will he break into the first-team? Probably not.
I’ve watched an awful lot of him and when he is in full flight he is a nightmare for defenders in the Under-21 Professional Development League 2 – which isn’t the greatest standard for young players to develop – but whether he would bring that into the first team is entirely different.
Petrasso was signed along with Dylan Carriero, who was released recently, in 2012 from Toronto. The move was manufactured by Marc Bircham after the pair impressed him whilst coaching with the Canadian national team. Recently released Tom Hitchcock was signed after his contract at Blackburn was terminated and his father, Kevin, had just taken up the role of goalkeeping coach at the club.
Sam Magri was signed for a low fee in 2012 after Portsmouth went into administration and despite representing England at youth level, the 20-year-old never progressed as was expected and was released this summer. Mo Shariff was playing in the Calor Gas league for Slough Town as a 17-year-old and was spotted by a scout. He then impressed on trial and signed a one-year deal in 2010 which was subsequently extended until his release this summer.
Max Ehmer was signed as a schoolboy after his father put money into the club – although he has proved his worth and could go on to have a decent career.
I could go on, but you get the point.
Where are the scouts getting the young players in from the ages of 7,8 or 9? And if they are there, why aren’t they staying?
Despite Steve Gallen doing well with the EDS and leading them to the play-off final for their division, they were ultimately undone by a Crewe side that in Gallen’s words had “invaluable first team experience”. Having experience is one thing but the Crewe EDS team that evening boasted a combined 100 appearances for their first team.
Tony Fernandes has often said he wants to focus on youth but little has been done in the time he has been here to improve it. The club still has one of the smallest budgets in the area despite his promises that youth will be the main focus once the training ground is up and running.
An ironic thing about Warren Farm, the proposed/not so proposed new training ground, is that it isn’t where QPR are making a name for themselves at the minute, but their rivals Brentford are. Miguel Rios, a former school teacher in Notting Hill who worked in Barcelona’s youth system, along with ex-Arsenal coach Ose Aibangee and Shaun O’Connor who discovered Jack Wilshere make up the three pillars of Brentford’s youth setup.
Rios will watch up to 10 games at the Ealing based site every Sunday morning and has 14 scouts reporting back to him on a casual basis. He is well known, liked and trusted among the coaches on a Sunday morning and arguably has the monopoly of the market thanks to his extensive list of contacts and endearing personality rather than the promise of a fancy training ground.
A awful lot was made about how Warren Farm was going to be this magnet for young players and QPR would suddenly start a conveyor belt of talent, hoovering up all the best young kids in west London – the Warren Farm plans have been put on the back burner recently.
The last talent QPR produced was one of the bright sparks for England in Brazil this year. Raheem Sterling left Rangers to sign for Liverpool back in 2010 as a 15-year-old for an initial £500,000 fee but the EDS boss says it wasn’t any facilities that made the England international but what was on the inside.
“I don’t get it when people say this about the new training ground, what made Raheem so good was something on the inside made, it wasn’t about what pitches he was playing on,” he said.
“Raheem had this natural talent and hunger to win. It was desperate, he hated losing. All he wanted to do was win.
“Manchester City, Spurs and the likes will have a better training ground than the one we are going to get so that won’t make them sign.
“What will make them sign will be the support we can give to players.
Gallen also says that having a good relationship with the players is paramount to them not only enjoying their time at the club but can be paramount to a player resigning with them.
“The case with Mikey Petrasso was like that, he was offered money elsewhere probably. But what got him to stay was the fact he knew all the coaches here, got on with them and knew he would be looked after.
“When Paolo Sousa was here, he called a meeting with me and two other of his coaches to report back on what we had done.
“The first guy spoke and said: ‘Paolo we’re missing this, this and this, the training ground is a joke’. Then the second guy went: ‘Paolo we are missing everything here, I can’t believe it.
“Then it was my turn to speak. ‘Paolo we’ve got a 14-year-old and he could be some player but we need to look after him.
“He came alive, he couldn’t do enough for me or him and we got Raheem training with the first team, we met his parent and brought him to games. We looked after him.”
“We then played him as a 14-year-old in a reserve game away at Aldershot, he was on the bench but we got him on for the last 20 minutes. These were professionals he was playing against and he stood out again.
Sterling has been and gone, made a name for himself and is living up to the potential that the coaches in W12 thought he had.
But QPR need the next Sterling to come through now and one they can keep. Players need to be brought in to the club at the young ages and kept, brought up with the ‘QPR way’ and hopefully either make the first team or can be sold on.
No-one is picking up the young players that aren’t good enough, they are just leaving the club on free transfers. When the club was relegated from the Premier League, it would have been the ideal time to used some of the youngsters, even if they were not good enough.
It would have helped them in the future, having on their CV that they played in the top-flight and made the first-team. It also would have helped QPR bump up their prices a little more, something that would be important to any other club.
The current crop of U18s have some very good young players though, Reece Grego-Cox is a tenacious forward in the Wayne Rooney mould and Darnell Furlong, son of former R’s forward Paul, is another good prospect. A pacey full-back who likes to get forward, but is also very good defending one-on-one.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I would love to have players come through that are actually brought through by the club and surely it would be a more economically viable route rather than the current method of signing any player the club can get it’s hands on?
jordanjamesfoster 
fucking journo
Thanks Brad, you stay awesome now.
You are absolutely right. Kids play football initially through friendship…kicking a ball with their mates. The driven and those that love the game will play on grass under headlights if they have to because it is something in them that wants to prove something. You need to get them around 7 years old and they will then stay with the rest of the kids they grow up with, develop their loyalty and trust, become like a parent. Brentford and Fulham have this understanding. Our club is wrapped in marketing, the brand……football has been lost because the investors only have their eyes on the glory and the cash, not the love. I coach kids of this age and on an FA course I was assured we lost Raheem Sterling because the man he trusted and who brought him to the club was fired without warning .
As a fan who is not privy to the day-to-day details of the running of the club I think this is a very interesting piece – most R’s fans have heard of the EDS players but have little to no actual knowledge of their quality or potential. There was a lot of discussion across the boards about why none of the players you have mentioned were given a chance (barring Hitchcock’s last minute contribution) and it’s sad that the answer may well lie in the fact that none of them are considered capable to make the step up in quality that is required. That said, the “You can’t just throw the players in, if it doesn’t go well for them it could ruin them…” line is problematic simply because it is a tautological argument. You can’t know how a player will react until you put them in the situation, but no-one will put them in because it might not go well. Bringing them into the first team setup, training, eating with the pro’s would surely help them immensely – and give the other EDS squad members something to aim for. It must be pretty dispiriting to know there is absolutely no prospect of moving upwards in the club hierarchy.
One thing I would query is whether the personal relationship is actually enough to keep a player at the club when there is interest from the ‘bigger’ clubs. It’s something that can be seen again and again – players getting their heads turned by the prospect of being part of a big four team and, maybe most pertinently, the financial incentives to move.