Harry Redknapp has recently come out and said that Pompey desperately need a decent youth policy in place as it's proving increasingly difficult to find players from across the continent who aren't massively overpriced. Not only that, but it's depressing to see our reserves continuously hammered (like recent 6-0 and 3-0 defeats to Reading and Watford reserves) and our current crop of youngsters can't beat the likes of Colchester United's, drawing 1-1 with them the other day.
We're certainly not renowned for producing top young talent. Gary O'Neil is the only player I can think of who has made the step-up from youth level as a fully fledged football player capable of playing at the highest level. But even then Terry Fenwick poached him from West Ham's famed academy!
An argument could be made for Rowan Vine too, but only time will tell whether he can prove himself as a Premiership player with Birmingham, providing they get promoted. The bottom line is that most players from our youth "academy" disappear into the wilderness, having never made it as a distinguished professional and that's just not good enough for a Premiership Football Club.
So that's where Paul Hart and the new training facilities come in...
Hart has a reputable track record at both Leeds and Nottingham Forest, helping the likes of Jonathan Woodgate, Jermaine Jenas, Michael Dawson and Paul Robinson grow into quality players. He's obviously excited by Pompey's plans for the new training facility that he says will be "unbelievable - second to none" so now it's up to him to find promising youngsters and coax them to Pompey, rather than see them go down the road and join Southampton's academy which has a good reputation for producing some talented (if over-rated) players.
Hart plans to produce his first "crop" of youngsters within the next four years and these fledglings should be ready to be blooded into the first team by then. However, if I'm being cynical then I could say we're not actually producing these players for ourselves.
Look at the previous list above. Three of those players now play for Tottenham and the other could well be playing for a club like Tottenham next season after his spell at Middlesbrough. It's very rare these days that most clubs keep hold of their talented youngsters as they end up being poached by the "big fish" of English football. Wayne Rooney and Theo Walcott didn't hang around for their respective clubs for too long once they had made the grade did they?
Who's to say that we wouldn't just be feeding the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal our own talented youngsters in the future? It could be a case that this youth system may actually provide a useful source of income via the huge transfer fees we would receive for these young players produced by our youth system.
So we'd be basically where we started, we'd have to buy in quality players from abroad only with more money than we had before, although that detail would be irrelevant if you continue to believe that we have a borderline infinity amount of cash to spend on players anyway.
Putting our faith in youth might not be the answer anyway. Teams with highly reputable youth academies aren't having the best of times right now. West Ham look like they're going down, Man City aren't having it much better whilst although the likes of Scummers and Ipswich regularly find their kids getting to latter stages of youth tournaments, they are both struggling to get out of the Championship. A good youth policy does not guarantee success on the field for the first team and that's where it matters most.
I'm getting well ahead of myself for the time being though and despite the rantings of the last few paragraphs, I'm all for having a quality youth system at the club although I'd hope that if any young players we produced had the decency to stay with us, no matter how good they got. I also believe that the appointment of Paul Hart indicates that we continue to develop as a Football Club that's going to go places in the future.
Now all we need is to have the new stadium built....
....anyone?