You are quoting one season

Clearly we had good players at that level but did they turn out to be more or less valuable than players we developed in the seasons after that.
We have still produced a ton of valuable talent while NOT winning.
(Maybe because we have focused resources on those individuals?)

Maybe the tactics of a game are based around those players.

The fact is while the VAST majority of youth players won't make it there is a smaller correlation between a winning youth team and producing first team footballers.

You would rather produce 1-2 quality talents a year than 5-6 players who are LG1 or LG2 quality at best.

And to be fair Webber and Weaver had been saying this for years.
They are not glossing over recent results. It was an ingrained philosophy that their job was to produce first team sellable talents not spend a ton of resources coaching players who they probably knew were not going to make it.

Posted By: usacanary, May 22, 12:18:56