Excellent post lifesanocean

I have a copy of 'Youth at United' dated July 1999. It was given out as a free broadsheet at a pre-season game at Tannadice. It deals with U/12s & up. There's a picture of the United U/12s winning the Six Nations Scottish Cup at a tournament held in Ayr. Of the 15 youngsters in the team photo one went on to 'make it' - Gary Kenneth.
In the rest of the 4-pages there are names aplenty from the 7 different age-group teams. Of a hundred or so names I would say there are no more than 7 or 8 that went on to have anything like a professional football career. One of them is Mark Wilson on the front cover, signing on for Luggy at United as the captain of Scotland U/14s. Another is Paul Jarvie but that's about as good as it gets.
Moral of the story - don't give up on School maybe?

 

blackandtangerine wrote:

lifesanocean wrote:

Financial backing (or lack thereof) is also a concern but tbh my understanding is that the club have never really backed the kids teams financially that well compared to other clubs (even back in the Levein days this was the case) and the hole in the funding was plugged by Arabtrust and the Fed.

  

The budget for the youth teams was 750k a season.  You'd still get Brian grant or stevie Campbell asking if fed and trust could put in money for things you'd think the club would pay for. Simple things like strips, rain jackets or balls. Happy to pay for them but we shouldn't have needed to.
 

 
100% agree with this.

Really don't get the sniping at Stevie Campbell btw. Heard that a few times now from Arabs on forums and Twitter 'oh how is the football genius Stevie Campbell getting on at the mighty Brechin?' etc etc.

This guy helped us produce players like Goodwillie, Russell, Allan, Armstrong, Gauld, John Souttar, Harry Souttar amongst others (all of whom are either capped at Full or U21/19 level for Scotland).

He also as stated above helped Dundee bring through a good crop of players in (Wilkie, Robb, Milne, McDonald etc).

So I find the chat about the success of youth academies being 'cyclical' slightly contradictory tbh.

If you have the correct coaches and scouts in place then there is no reason why clubs can't have continuous success in the respect of finding young talent and evolving it towards first team standard.

There is a quote from David Narey on a wall at Tannadice that reads along the lines of 'second is never good enough at Dundee United'.

I sometimes wish our supporters would adopt this type of mentality more often.

There's often a psyche of failure around the club and it seeps down from the top of the club and infiltrates the support.

Whereby things like relegation, financial difficulties, or failure or stagnation of the Youth set-up is almost met with a shrug of the shoulders and an attitude of 'ach...what can you do?'.It's an attitude that is complicit in failure.

The Rangers are at Tannadice 6pm Tuesday evening Pat.
Be there or be square

smedDUm wrote:

The Rangers are at Tannadice 6pm Tuesday evening Pat.
Be there or be square

I'm sure you are kidding me. I sometimes don't bother travelling when the senior teams are playing each other.

Tek wrote:

 
No, no Pat

Wasn't meaning you.
 

It's okay, sometimes I think we are concentrating on what's gone rather than what is to come.

Sevco Devs are pretty poor tbh (in fact they got Durrant the tin tack last season they were that poor)

Regardless, credit where credits due. That's a fine win against a side who's resources and youth set-up dwarfs ours.

Fantastic to see a clean sheet also. Apparently Jamie Robson played Central Defence. Interesting.

We were excellent for 90 minutes. Great movement throughout the team, totally committed tackling & challenging, one of the best United performances at any level I've enjoyed this season. The Rangers were Abraham Lincoln but that's more to do with us being so good. We didn't have a single weakness but standouts were The Smiths, No 8 Brad defensive mid, Matty No 10 more attacking, neither would look out of place in the senior team. Jamie Robson was a revelation at left central defence, you saw his aerial ability which you don't see at LB and the blocks & challenges he made were full-blooded. Louis Appere a tall raiding right winger, just 17 and looks a great prospect. Col Donaldson was head & shoulders above the oppo & Jordan Hornby at LB, what a delivery he's got, he never took a bad left-footed free kick or corner all night, I would say he's the best dead-baller in the Club, every corner was danger to their defence, sublime free kick for Donaldson's headed goal. Scott Allardice, tall right mid looks a prospect. Brett Long, not a lot to do but looks assured & gets his shut-out.  All round great performance, well done Bo & Co, they must have been chuffed.

Waxing lyrical or what?!

Last edited by smedDUm (05/10/2016 1:23 pm)

Devs drew 1-1 tonight in Inverness.

Bit like last week, Jamie Robson standout at LCB and won everything in the air, Donaldson was decent.

A couple of guys I've not seen before, Cammy Ballantyne looked confident at RB and a few decent deliveries, Scott Allardice gave 100% until the last minute and fought for every ball and my MOTM.  Ali Coote coming on turned the game for us, offered nothing up top until then , Garden and Appere both poor.

we on 3 2 coote hat trick

I was at the game. Were the better team for the first 25 mins and looked like we would score every time we went forward. Missed Coote's first but his second came from a slack pass from Craig Storie and Coote got played in and blasted it into the corner. We dropped off the pace after that and the game got scrappy for the last 20 mins of the first half.

2nd half Aberdeen had more of the ball but never really threatened until the last 25 mins and even then it was really self-inflicted from us.  We were still making chances and Graham Taylor really should have scored. Their 1st goal came from a ball played over the trailist and the striker leaving him for dead. (tbf he'd looked decent up until then but was subbed soon after). The second came from Utd not being able to deal with a ball into the box. Harvey Dailly was probably at fault. He'd been excellent first half and is really good on the ball but had a few dodgy moments second half and needs to fill out. Fair play to Utd though, they scored the 3rd almost right away and it was an absolute cracker. At least 4 times Utd players got in first in front of their players and Coote especially burst in front of a couple of players and showed real determination to score. Aberdeen should've actually equalized after it though with a header.

Overall, Utd definitely deserved it and the 3rd goal was worth going for alone due to the real team effort involved in it.

Coote played in fits and starts but you can see he is quality and was clearly the best player on the park. I was impressed by Brett Long, Scott Allardice and Graham Taylor as well.   Cammy Ballantyne did well and Apere has some good touches too.

Less impressed by Jordan Garden and Aaron Murrell up front although to be fair they worked really hard and pressed their defence non-stop.

Aberdeen were shite. Neil Alexander looked well past his sell-by-date in goal. For a boy with his experience he didn't command his area at all and his kicking was rank.

Seen Jamie Robson and Matty Smith. Robson said he was injured and will be out until next week. Not sure why Matty wasn't involved. Brad Smith was suspended.

Last edited by lifesanocean (18/10/2016 8:21 pm)

The boy Brett Long seems to be doing well thats a fee people ive seen say he has been good not just last night game.

How was theboy Aperre?
Was the trialist the ex rangers player?

Last edited by bowers (19/10/2016 5:32 am)