Alves in limbo and Fatawu benched: When will the next generation get their chance?
The headlines and the dissection would have been a lot different this international break had Leicester not beaten Bournemouth. But one fact has lingered and keeps bothering me. I sense I’m not alone either. Our 288-game streak with at least one Academy graduate in the matchday squad came to an end against Bournemouth.
It’s a fact that has been overshadowed by our first league win amongst other things. But whether you chalk it off as just a coincidence given injuries to academy players like Choudhury and Stolarczyk, who regularly make the matchday squad, or whether Steve Cooper is putting all his eggs in the basket of experience. It’s frustrating though and seems to mark a growing trend.
There’s always been a sense of pride to have academy players making that step up and featuring in the first time. We had it last season with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in a starring role in our Championship title, and when we did last grace Europe, we had Harvey Barnes and Luke Thomas overlapping down the left wing, Dewsbury-Hall scoring against Napoli and the likes of Ben Nelson and Kasey McAteer making the bench.
You could argue our abysmal luck with injuries contributed to who we had to put into the squads but we’ve been slow to progress that next generation from the 2021/22 season. McAteer has been the closest, getting the most minutes but now finding himself a little out of favour.
Nelson is currently out on loan at Oxford getting some good reviews, but considering we were lining him up on the bench in big European games two seasons ago, you’d have hoped to have seen more of him already. The closest we’ve come this season under Steve Cooper is the Carabao Cup tie against Tranmere, but even then the academy minutes were largely issued once we’d secured a comfortable lead.
Growing disillusion
Fans are clamouring to have that next player of our own to cheer on. With the likes of Caleb Okoli and Facundo Buonanotte playing frequently, Cooper doesn’t seem to be against using the younger generation, and both of them are exciting, but who is going to the next local lad to get a breakthrough?
It’s no surprise that this piece posted last week resonated so much. A lot of fans, not just at Leicester, feel more disillusioned than ever with their own clubs and the sport in general.
More of the headlines seem to play out in courtrooms or from social media posts than from moments in games or actual goals. With the wages even average Premier League footballers earn, the typical fan in the stands has never been further away from feeling connected to those on the pitch.
Academy players, seeing these young players break into the team can be a tonic to it all. But it doesn’t seem like clubs are necessarily in agreement, or care. This summer the transfer window was a mockery, half the late deals done just to satisfy accountants, players treated like commodities more than ever before. Academy players can be counted as pure profit, meaning boys who grew up so excited to represent their boyhood club are increasingly being sold whether they want it or not.
It speaks to a bigger problem, football approaching its ouroborus moment, the symbol of the serpent close to devouring its own tail. By tradition, this should mean we’re heading towards rebirth, a change for the better.
Last month on Instagram, we’ve been running a series of polls on former players asking if you still wish them well. Not many got as much love as Harvey Barnes, except for some of the legends from the Premier League title season. The Fosse Way Whatsapp has had quite a few weekends recently of cheering on Barnes’ goal haul and generally missing him. There’s an extra bond with the players we’ve seen come through the ranks.
It’s not a golden rule of course. How they conduct themselves in the manner of exit play a role. Ben Chilwell and Joe Mattock were both proof of that.
Alves in limbo
It’s hard to ignore the Alves shaped elephant in the room. Quite what the plan is for the youngster is unclear. He’s not regularly making it into league matchday squads for us, he’s not had proper chances in the Carabao Cup but we didn’t appear to make much effort to send him out on loan to get him some much needed minutes. The former could be excused if our bench was stocked to the brim with attacking and creative players, but it has the likes of Boubakary Soumare making up the numbers.
It’s hard not to look at Buonanotte and imagine us trying the same approach with Alves. We’ve been hearing about him for a while now and while we’ve all been here before, Elliott Chamberlain, Layton Ndukwu and so on, Alves looks pretty special.
Despite our concerns that the main young player we’re seeing isn’t our own, Leicester sit 6th in the table of Premier League teams for academy grown talent to feature in matchday squads so far, according to TransferMarkt. We’re just below Manchester City with 5 players who have played at least once in the youth setup featuring in games.
This sounds more promising until you dig a little deeper. The five are: Hamza Choudhury, Luke Thomas, Kasey McAteer and then we’re presuming it’s the single bench appearance for Ben Nelson and Daniel Iverson topping that up. Unless they’re counting James Justin having played for our under 21s. Choudhury is the only one even remotely close to the starting lineup though, the stat hiding the real story.
The football observatory’s focus on most youth-oriented clubs seems to be more accurate. Their recent study looked at the percentage of minutes by footballers who did not yet turn 21 in domestic league matches played over the last three years (September 2021-2024). Our players under 21 only account for 6.8% of all minutes played in that time. Though that puts us fourth highest amongst others in our league, Southampton leading the way with 12.1% and Brighton just behind.
One of our best young players, Abdul Fatawu, may not have developed in our academy but is another victim in these early games under Cooper. Our new manager looks to be learning on the job in terms of our best team and how to use them. Perhaps it’s no surprise that if Fatawu can’t get in the starting lineup, despite his success last year, those who were on the fringes can’t either.
Cooper has been tweaking gradually when he has made changes, all in the name of balance. He seems to be fairly risk averse, so perhaps loaning out the likes of Nelson and Braybrooke are less surprising.
He has favoured experienced heads, safer feet between Jordan Ayew and Bobby De Cordova-Reid. But for Alves, that position allows for risk, for flair. Look at Buonanotte. He’s pushing what’s possible and if a pass or a move doesn’t work, there’s two lines of defence behind him. It’s hard to argue in favour of this though when it’s also seen us bring on Soumare when trying to conserve a lead.
Cooper ultimately won’t be judged on how academy players progress, but it would win him some friends and generosity with the crowd if we felt we were seeing the best talent, the most exciting talent and maybe, just maybe giving a few minutes here and there to Alves and the others. They could end up surprising him if they were allowed the opportunities.
The Model
Unless you’re one of the elite clubs, you know the model. Southampton did it, Leicester have done it, Brighton are the current leaders of it. You develop, progress and prepare your best (usually young) players for that next step up and for a big transfer fee. It’s a familiar model for Leicester City. Or it was until we took a year off, aimed high and fell spectacularly.
With a return to the Premier League, but still forced to sell Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, it seems like the model is back where we sell one or two top players to balance the books or top up the coffers and hope we recruit well to replace them. Or in the ideal scenario, you have the next academy player/s waiting to break through.
In the last ten years, we’ve made around £100 million from selling 6 academy grown talents: George Hirst, Ben Chilwell, Callum Elder, Jeffrey Schlupp, Harvey Barnes and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. That last deal was cut price, and it’s clear that Dewsbury-Hall is a squad filler at best to Chelsea compared to one of the first names on our team sheet.
These figures put us in the bottom half for English clubs. Chelsea lead the way of course, they’ve sold 28 of their own since 2014, netting them £290 million.
The model relies on you having talent to entice other teams. If we aren’t playing them, we’re also unlikely to be selling them. This is the catch twenty-two of it. If we do play them and they’re good, then bigger teams will come knocking. It’s good money for the club, but there’s always an extra sting in transfers when it’s one of our own we’re saying goodbye to. Right now, our biggest concern for who we might lose is Mads Hermansen.
We couldn’t offload Luke Thomas in the last two years of trying, having driven his stock low between poor performances and something none of us have been able to put a finger on considering things looked so promising at one stage. Dewsbury-Hall was the last sure thing in terms of an academy graduate we could sell for money and we got less than we probably should have done.
Leicester City have no excuses not to be pushing for more homegrown talent in our squad. The facilities alone should be giving young players all they need and more to develop off the pitch between the training ground, having been around the club for the last however many years of this rollercoaster we’re on.
The current crop seems to have plenty of time and has been providing some cheer where victories for the first team were in short supply. The only thing we seem to be lacking for our youngsters right now is opportunity.
Most of us would have been happy to ditch a number of the first team that helped relegate us in favour of playing some younger, hungrier players. They couldn’t have performed much worse.
Under Enzo Maresca in the Championship, there was a bit of an emphasis on youth. Wanya Marcal and Kasey McAteer got their chances, Dewsbury-Hall was the focal point and he even turned to Nelson on occasion. He seemed more willing to risk it if the player was good enough than we’ve seen from Cooper so far.
So far this season the most development we’ve provided for a young player is for Facundo Buonanotte. He’s brilliant to watch and a real talent, but he isn’t ours.
We live in a results obsessed time, but as time has shown up, results are just one part in enjoying the matchday experience for fans. To feel proud of and connected to our club should rank much higher and if we could start to see more of Alves, Braybrooke and Nelson, it would definitely help.
