(04-02-2018 09:34 AM)aTxTIGER Wrote:  

(04-01-2018 05:52 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(04-01-2018 01:25 PM)aTxTIGER Wrote:  The difference between Southampton and Sunderland is that SOTON's academy is awesome. They can produce players good enough for the Championship in house.

To a certain extent...but many forget that they were out of the Championship for quite some time with that vaunted academy, and it really hasn't produced a ton recently outside of Shaw and Chambers who have both flared out a bit.

Southampton had liquidity issues when they went down in the early 2000s so they had to sell that talent earlier than usual. They wouldve loved to have kept Bale, Jones and Walcott longer than they did Im sure.

Even then, they almost yo-yo'd back the the PL their fist season after relegation. They lost in the playoff to Derby.

Imagine if they were able to keep all their academy players. They would’ve won the league by now. I wish the FA would force teams to have X academy players in their squad each season.

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