The Academy of Light: Part 3 of our series
One of the key issues raised when it comes to players weighing up their future on Wearside is that of the firstteam pathway.
Put simply: Is it strong enough? Some who have moved on felt it wasn’t and did not think that was going to change in the near future. This is an issue because while Sunderland are in League One, that should be a central part of their USP.
In his departing remarks, Paul Reid cited a stat that during his tenure, Sunderland achieved a 100% rate of having two academy graduate sin their matchday squads, against an industry average of 68%.
Yet this quite only told part of the story, given that George Honeyman, Josh Maja and Lynden Gooch were already part of the first-team squad before relegation.
Since then, there has only really been Denver Hume who has broken through and had a sustained run in the side.
Even then, Hume benefited from the faith of Jack Ross and also the fact that during the early stage of the season when he had some very difficult afternoons, Sunderland essentially had no alternative.
There is a sense that Sunderland missed a rebuilding opportunity in the summer of 2018, with the youthful squad that faced Charlton Athletic slowly giving way to a more experienced group.
Clearly, it is harder to prioritise youth at a club where the need for promotion is essential. This is a process also not helped, for example, when a 100-point target is set out in the run-up to a campaign.
Is that the best way and environment in which to blood, for example, Ethan Rob son and Elliot Embleton?
All of which means what should be a major selling point in terms of recruiting players, ends up being not quite so much. As one former player put it :“Sunderland is such a big club and has such big expectations and because they have a bigger budget they can afford to get more experienced players ."
The player felt that generally, the fact that the first team were not quite hitting the heights meant that experienced professionals would always get the nod given the pressure staff were under.
Phil Parkinson, it must be said, would counter that by saying that he will give Embl et on a chance to impress in pre-season, alongside Jack Diamond and Brandon Taylor, providing the latter signs a new deal as expected.
Like Ross, his staff have always been present at home games and one former academy player said they do feel there is attention paid to their progress. “He never misses an U23 game, and knowing that he' s always watching. If you had a good game, you'd be rewarded, whether that was being in his match day squad or training with the first team.”
One area where some progress has undoubtedly been made is in exposing better academy players to senior football earlier via the loan system.
This was a major problem towards the end of Sunderland’s Premier League spell and the subsequent descent into League One.
Speaking last month, Ethan Robson ‘spoke of the holding pattern’ he found himself in for much of his Black Cats career.
He would be relatively close to the first-team picture, but always an injury or two away from the squad, which then lead to managers denying him the chance to get valuable exposure elsewhere.
He was indebted to Ross for allowing him to do so, giving him a much better chance of breaking through even if in the end, that didn’t quite happen.
That, too, raises some pathway questions, given the steady influx of midfielders at first-team throughout the last two years, as we have already reflected on in the case of Bali Mumba. Under Kevin Ball’s watch, Elliot Embleton has had a hugely successful loan at Grimsby Town and Jack Diamond has thrived in the National League at Harrogate Town. How both now fare and what opportunities they get will be both fascinating to watch and hugely instructive.
With regards to pathway, then, there is much to ponder.
Firstly, there is the concern over the lack of a clear philosophy that connects the first team to the rest of the academy, something that has been completely muddled by the constant churn of manager sat first-team level over the years.
While most managers have paid attention to the academy, watching games and bringing players into squads and training groups, those players find themselves back at square one when the cycle begins again.
As Robson explained: “For any player that’s tough but I think for any player in the academy. You think you’ re in the plans, then the manager gets sacked and you’ve got to do it all over again.”
In turn, the pressure and spectre of change makes it harder for managers to be bold in picking young talent, rather than recruiting in experience from elsewhere.
There is a stark contrast, for example, with Norwich City, where the plan to blood and persist with youngsters no matter what was spelled out from the top. They stuck with it, even when results initially suffered as a result.
Moving forward, there is the simple and pressing fear that as a result of the departures from the previous years, there is simply not going to be the quality in the U18 and U23 groups to even make it a major point of discussion.
Sunderland, then, will likely have a healthy academy presence in their squad next season, even if there are doubts about just how prominent they will be when it comes to the manager’s starting XI.
The issue is not the current generation, which Reid’ s statistic showed has been a success, but the next. A generation has been lost to the U18 and U23 sides, with the long-term repercussions of that perhaps still to be felt.
The main concern is that at this stage, the issues with retainingtalent and the strength of the upper age groups could worsen in the coming months, rather than improve. Unless there is change and investment, the damage will only extend even further into the future.