Fans Attitude Towards Young Players

Personally I’ve got plenty of time for Abada to learn on the job. It’s Abada’s first year here and at such a young age I’ve seen enough to know that he’s going to go to a top 5 league. He’s by no means the finished product, which is why he’s learning on the job.

Turnbull is a difficult one. It’s easy to forget he’s 21, however I think there’s more expectation on him because he’s been around awhile now in the Scottish league.

 

As with most things, the club and specifically this board are to blame for this as well.

Obviously they can't be blamed for individuals impatience and unrealistic demands on young talent, as you've pointed out with both Turnbull and Abada, a noticeable chunk of fans are quick to turn on them after a poor game or two.

But they are young and I want to believe majority of us are realistic in knowing they will blow hot and cold for a couple of seasons till they get in to their career more.

I was * off no end with how poor we've developed players from our youth, Welsh is a great example of how * we are at it.
He's clearly got something to him, he's reading games fairly well, commanding when he wants to be and is willing to learn and show some passion. But he took til he was well in to his 20th year before he got a debut, and at that it was only s forced debut. A run of games last season was through sheer incompetence of the last manager. It's showing now, that a manager like Ange, who is willing to give young talent a try, is playing him more realistically in terms of his career age.
Really, at 18 he should have made a debut, end of season sort of meaningless games, off the bench often in a second season, third season (IE last season) breaking in to cup games as a starter, good rotation etc, then this season ready to pick up 20-30 good games and looking to next season to take his place in the starting line up every week as a strong 22 year old talent.

But nah, we threw him in as a last resort, 2 years after when his debut should have been and put the entire world (Celtics world) on his shoulder.
He's then been tasked this season (early on) to be the only consistent CB we had during key games and a massive rebuild and change in style.

That's on the club. For hiring absolute nonsense managers like Lennon and not having any sort of development coaches and pathways to help progress these talents.

Back to Abada and Turnbull, we see it again. Two young talents with a season or so under their belts. Turnbull is a year behind his own development what with his knee issue, bit we seemingly do very little in regards actually developing the talent.
We don't have sensible approaches to their game time, we don't have much in the way or adequate support and experienced players (generally speaking, as with Abada Forrest will surely provide this when back fit) or a sensible reserve league setup/loan system to get the best out of talent when they aren't quite ready for us (that's actually a higher issue for the league as well).

As fans, I think a lot of folk forget how lacking and backwards we are as a club. Blame the players when they inevitably have a bad run and don't seem to realise that being so under prepared and staffed (both on the pitch and off it) means these guys are burning out, being pushed through poor spells and asked to do everything when they simply aren't ready for that level of pressure.

Happened a few years ago with Ajer as well. As a 19/20 year old folk was shouting about how * he was, forgetting that at times he was the only decent option we had available to us, in a position that he was still learning (still is).

Funny ebough, the best thing we done for ajer was his loan spell to killmarnock, one of few sensible loan spells we have ever made.

Christie, as a bad example, was loaned out to the sheep back to back, as a view to punt him - only a depleted midfield meant he got a chance here (same as Welsh), rather than an active approach to develop the talent.

Then we have young Dembele the last two seasons screaming to get a chance, a talent that the whole of Europe at points was excited to see and keeping tabs on. Lennon approach, do * all to help him.
Apparently we couldn't afford to give the lad game time off the bench in games we would he clearly winning (not that that happened too often last season mind you), where as clubs like Barcelona (yeah yeah, we aren't comparing Dembele to Pedri or anything), are able to offer debuts and active game time to 17 and 18 year olds to develop the talent. We tell them to shut up and wait till we have a disaster before thrusting an entire season of pressure on them.


So yeah, as a fan base, we do have some impatience within, but it's on the club for not being able to actively develop talent here.
Talent shouldn't be getting to 20 years old and not making any sort of active game time. Ending up being 22 or 23 and released.

At 18 and 19 we should know of our young talent has the true potential to develop here or not and be actively making their career in to the first team a real possibility.


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I think it's mostly down to absolute calamity that is our entire scouting operation... Or lack thereof.

We should have multiple scouts at games across the country, identifying young targets who we can develop from an early age.

At this point it would appear we merely rely on word of mouth for this.
Such and such a bloke is mates with another bloke and this bloke is mates with a bloke who knows another bloke with contacts at Celtic, so we wait on said blokes to carry the word and hope the bloke at Celtic has the time or inclination to take a drive out of Glasgow... Or more likely, send word back through ALL the blokes to take a video on his * phone of the game which he might or might not watch in the * after a Sunday sesh.

We quite simply have no scouting department, nevermind a network of independents whose word can be trusted.

It's why we sign the likes of McCarthy and Scales, or rely on a * Israeli agent with stupid name to help bolster our squad. (No offence dudu)

We're a * show from top to bottom.

Evidenced by how many of us are so keen for Ange to bring in more players from Japan, so at least we know HE has identified them, and the board haven't went bin hoking looking for old notes from Rodgers and Lennon.

As others have rightly said, youth development is going to be absolutely VITAL for us in the coming years.
We now have another super duper billionaire club on our doorstep, which will only further inflate prices and widen the financial gap.

There was a time we could have looked at the benches of top EPL clubs, and took their Hartsons, or their Sutton's, or outbid lower tier EPL clubs for players like Petrov et al.

Then we devolved to a loanee culture to subsidize the squad, taking EPL "prospects".

Now we're almost completely priced out of the * English championship, and can't afford some league * one players. A la Ivan.

And given the financial shithousery of our board... It's only going to keep getting worse.

Which is why we NEED to look to developing our own players. But until we get an actual scouting department... We're *.

 

It a perception thing, when youngsters come through even after years sometimes we still view them as youngsters, take Ralston he is 22, he should not be considered a youth prospect anymore, it took me ages to switch from looking at McG and Forrest as young youth prospects.

 

As an example, Ralston at 22 should have been let go.
Not left to this stage to get his "break" which, all credit to his passion and commitment, he simply isn't good enough.

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Sometimes players are late bloomers, but 22 is plenty I agree, we have let some great players go in the past before they ever got a sniff at the first team, then they went on to become huge successes.

 

Generally no. I think on the whole, fan expectations almost always exceed a player's output. Opinion on a player can change with the wind amongst a support in my experience, and we're all guilty of it at some point. Fans of clubs like ours are less patient than fans of smaller clubs too, because we demand success and we always will.

 

Hawl

 

Totally agree and think it was minty in another thread with a good argument about obviously there is some development and coaching happening (we can debate the value and expertise of it of course), but we tend to neglect them in my opinion. Obvious talents will always rise, but on the whole, we allow good talent to stagnate and then let them disappear.
Or in Ralston case, he has been held on to long enough that he's eventually became useful - more so because there was no one else.

Certainly much much more we can do at this club and for one who tries to pretend we are a developing club, we clearly aren't.

As shown by how many have left us citing better opportunities elsewhere.

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Talent needs to be nurtured but with regards to Abada and Turnbull their protection is limited due to squad depth and injuries. Its not the way you should emerge youth into a side. But the situation at celtic right now are not giving youth a fair cracking of the whip, just thrown I to the limelight and expected to perform. Its sad to see, as you see the heart being ripped out of them every mistake that they do, this season is particularly different to most as they've been thrust into the limelight with little to no choice but to do so.

 

You new to Scottish football mate?

Happens at every club. Even with the national team.

The vast majority of this country are absolutely clueless about football.

 

Thing is, we’ve not really gave the youth a chance previously so it wasn’t as noticeable, guys like McGregor and Forrest got it and that was about it.

 

The amount of people who still don’t rate them, especially Forrest tells you everything you need to know.