RALPH Hasenhuttl has admitted “big concern” with Saints’ B team, before revealing just how difficult academy recruitment is becoming amid the ever-growing hegemony of bigger clubs.
Saints B’s torrid run of results continued in the same fashion yet somehow managed to spring a surprise, this time going two goals ahead almost immediately only to throw it away by half-time and lose 3-2.
The magnitude of the run has to be fully understood. The young Saints have experienced defeat 13 times in the last 16 games, and they’ve picked up two points in 14 Premier League 2 fixtures dating back to February – not one win.
The team was relegated from Division One last season and the reason mostly cited was losing their best players to first team duty. This campaign, they’re playing against men with 15-year-olds like Kamari Doyle.
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But the run of form might be indicative of a truer, far more pressing concern for academy football, with big clubs snapping up youngsters barely in their teens for fees the likes of which everyone else can’t, and wouldn’t, compete with.
Hasenhuttl explains: “It is getting more and more difficult every year to sign players at youth, good players."
Man City signed 13-year-old Leke Drake from Stevenage for £450k this summer, and he's not the only occasion they've done this. They then paid Saints £1.5million for 15-year-old defender Max Alleyne.
“Very often they are going to bigger clubs now and then it seems when they feel there is no way through then you have the chance get them back, but that is immediately for the first team and not for the under-23s.
“This is the issue we have at the moment, to find good players for the academy is getting more difficult, it takes a lot of money if you want to do this and very often you are second winner because there is bigger clubs going for them.”
One example of ‘getting a player back’ later is Tino Livramento, who Saints allured to the club with the promise of first-team football after he’d developed at Cobham up to 18-years-old.
“This is the reason why they are still costing a lot of money, although they are young players,” Hasenhuttl adds. “This money you can definitely invest because you get a big reward for it and a good player for it.
“But when you pay for a 13/14-year-old player I don’t know how much money, for us this is very tough, very difficult, for bigger clubs this is easier, they take them as talents at 13, 14-years-old.”
But, regardless of the wider issues that continue to develop, bottom-placed Saints B’s performances and results just simply can’t be brushed over.
Hasenhuttl still expects them to do better than what they have been.
The Austrian continued: “Yeah, it’s a big concern because it shows that some of the players we had with us last season in the Premier League and are even struggling now in under-23s.
“So it shows them how big the gap is at the moment of competing on a higher level. We must be very clear that this is simply not the performances we want to see.
“Everybody has to work hard to get this issue sorted as we have definitely a different expectation from our academy overall.
“What we can do and what we have to do is work with the players we have here to develop them as quick as possible.
“Even then it is becoming more and more difficult every year to create a Premier League player, not everybody can become a Premier League player.”
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