EskWeston

The way Webb was waiting for the Man Utd players reactions before giving fouls sometimes yesterday was quite shocking. He could not wait to blow for a pen, the first one was as soft as you like and the second was just plain ridiculous.

Given the current state of our squad and the mentality of what we are seeing from a lot of the players i think it is more important who we let go than who we bring in. We HAVE to let go of the past now, and seriously look to the future. But more importantly we need to buy the right TYPE of players who are going to fit the system that we want to play. I am not going to speculate on who should leave and who should come in, but if we don't make radical changes this summer then things are going to become even harder for us.

Sam is a very good keeper, as is Jamal Blackman. Hope he can develop right, finding the best loans for keepers is incredibly hard though.

Well it was said he is going straight into the reserves. With Prosenik out of the club now and Mitrovic struggling to regain form it will be interesting to see how he does. He certainly seems to have an eye for goal, much like a certain Fabio Borini.

Excellent news that Piazon has gone with the squad to Swansea. Strange that Lalkovic wasn't considered. Hope Piazon gets a chance to get on the pitch,

LOL, now THAT i would like to see.

Blimey are we talking hand shakes again? It's not a binding contract to be BFF's. Just shake hands, get on with the game, if there is anything to be answered for it will be dealt with.

The fact that we would get another winger.

I wouldn't count on that.....

Would be very pleased to see us sign De Bruyne, seems to be a very good technical player. Great eye for a pass and able to beat a man. Would be a bit crazy to loan him back though, we need a winger now.

Having good moments and times when he can't get involved in the game. Still very early for him and he will improve and be a very good player i am sure.

He is settling in nicely, immensely talented but still a way to grow and needs time to settle more.

Agree with that! Just look how much we struggle for wide players, with Sturridge out we had to resort to Ramires. But i think a bigger issue is the balance of the team. Mata HAS to play the number 10 role in the middle, we have been crying out for it and he is ideal, we would get more out of him. The trouble is we dont have an effective replacement on the left wing and it also pushes Lamps out of the team, for me this is not an issue because the form of the team has to come before any individual player. For me we need a right back, Bosingwa is not up to it and Ivanovic is not a natural there and we need a winger, we would be in a good position then to compete well and build around that starting 11. I believe if we were to see something like this: ............................................Cech.............................................. New player.............Luiz......................Terry.........................Cole ...........................................Romeu............................................ .......................Ramires.............................................................. .......................................................Mata.................................... Sturridge.............................Torres...........................New Player We would perform so much better purely because of the balance it would bring to the team, everyone carrying out roles they are comfortable with.

To me when he has played this season he has looked like a player with his mind already elsewhere, obviously we have no other back up for the wings, but if the oppertunity to sign a new winger and move Malouda on came about i would grab it with both hands.

The bottom line is unless SOMETHING is done, something substantial, for players in the 18 to 21 age bracket then the national team will never improve. This is the biggest reason why English youngsters never reach their full potential. Do you think that when Spain lifted the World Cup the fans were concerned about the effect B teams has on their league. At the end of the day we need to do something to help the development of young english players. Too many are dropping at this hurdle when they shouldn't be, our players can achieve so much more with the right development. In that article the accusation is that Mangers don't utilize the reserve league properly. That is the most rubbish i have heard on this subject, the reserve set up is awful for the development of young players, awful, this needs to be addressed properly, that is a fact.

Certainly interesting he mentioned Nditi, not one of the real talents in the current squad IMO.

Basically you are talking about doing a podcast? Streaming it live would be very difficlut with our multi national forum with different time zones ect.... but a podcast would be great idea, but also quite difficlut to do i would imagine. If there was a way to work it without physically meeting up to do it then it would work brilliantly, and i would be up for contributing every now and then when i could. Would imagine the biggest problem of using Skype or something similar would be the sound quality.

For me a bigger problem than loans is the reserve set up - the 18 - 21 age bracket, crucial development time for players and this is where we are failing in this country. We need proper competitive football for these young players to be tested week in week out, at the moment they play very sporadically and in an environment that has very little challenge. This is what needs to be worked on and i beleive we would see better results with loans as well. Loans are working something like 4 times out of 10. With Sturridge it was obvious he just needed game time, and his loan was clearly a successs. With Kakuta i feel the club has made mistakes with him, for his first loan to go to the Premiership was a massive gamble and one that was never going to work imo, in the reserves it was clear he needed more games and confidence, he should have gone to a Championship club last season or even this to play plenty of games and get his confidence up before trying a Premiership club. PVA just seems to have been badly managed by Wigan, played well at the start of the season and then just dropped. Ryan Bertrand is a good example of the loan system working, stated off in the lower leagues and gradually worked his way up to top Championship level and now is first team back up (even though he should be getting more minutes), this is how it should work, now he competes for a first team place. Young players will not just have a loan spell and then come back and be starting 11, Sturridge is a rare example, and he was helped by our very limited options on the wings. In an ideal world we would have B teams, but that is not going to happen for many years if at all, work on how to help the development of 18 to 21 year olds and bridge the gap to the first team.

At the ages they are at it means nothing, we could still not see them even for the U18's. Not sure it was the best thing for these kids for Luton to make this public, players move around clubs so much at this age.

Just another example of how difficult it is for a young player to make it at CFC, ideally he would have been given the oppertunity of a good loan move, but with our squad it just isn't possible because we do need him.

Very unlikely he will go out on loan i would think. His injury problems mean he has to be very carefully managed, allowing another club to take control of that would be a risk.

Highlights:

Absolutely love Stephen King, got most of his many books now. Am currently reading "Insomnia" by King - very good so far, only near the beginning. Very much looking forward to reading 11/22/63, looks excellent. If you think it is his best thing for 7-8 years that bodes well because i thought Duma Key and Under The Dome were just brilliant.

Yes all of our age groups are of the highest quality you will see in the country. This current Youth cup squad also is ridiculously good (although they have played no-where near their level so far in the cup). The Youth teams are great, it is at reserve level that the problem comes. And then the step up to first team. Some massive improvements needed there, especially at the reserve level. Yes he is the same age group as Swift and was playing U18's game before Swift. Excellent player Baker is, as with most of our youngsters now, so good on the ball. Was pleased to see him play the number 10 in this game as previously he has played the holding role. Huge potential, but never got close to realising that potential. Could have destroyed teams but i can think of only 2 or 3 games where he played to what his ability was. Other than that was massively frustrated with him. Maybe if given the oppertunity to play in the first team he could have shown the quality, but to be honest he never really performed well enough to earn that chance. Lalkovic is a much more consistant player than Tore was, it is easy to look back when someone is doing well at another club but Tore never performed for us as he could have done. Lalkovic is a player i really want handled well, speed, skill and a good finish. Could be a new Robben for us, but needs to be allowed to develop not stagnate like to many before him.

This game most certainly was not a classic by any means, a poor game in truth but at least we made it through. This is a hugely talented team through and i hope they can gel better for the next game against West Ham. A lot of this team will be able to play next year too which is good news. Chalobah wasn't as good in this game for me, needed to be a bigger influence. Piazon and Affane struggled to get into the game, Piazon had to come central and deeper to get the ball. Adam Nditi is a liability for me at left back, he seems to me to be not to intelligent in the way he plays, when he played further forward he was able to get away with that but in defence he is gets caught a LOT making wrong choices. Nathan Ake and John Swift have impressed the most over the 2 FA Youth Cup games, very very good players. But Chalobah, Baker, Piazon, Feruz and Kane are bloody top class players......