Homegrown players face challenge to earn place
Former Red Gregor Robertson looks at the challenge for young footballing hopefuls
“WE’VE got this one lad...” Jack Lester would often tell me, when he was a coach in Nottingham Forest’s academy.
After the first couple of times he’d eulogised about this young player, when I asked who to look out for on the production line, I knew what name was coming next. Ben Brereton, Matty Cash, Joe Worrall - all got glowing references. But it was Ryan Yates who made Lester’s eyes light up. He’s a “winner”, Lester said.
It was widely expected he would automatically be sent out on loan again this season, especially after Forest’s unprecedented outlay in the transfer market. The midfielder, however, has impressed during preseason, been rewarded with a new three-year contract and, despite there now being a number of former Premier League midfielders in Forest’s ranks, he has evidently given Karanka something to think about.
That should not come as a surprise: Yates has made a strong impression on every manager he has played for. His attitude and workrate are a reflection of everything Gary Brazil’s academy stands for.
He was a leader in the teams that won the under-18s and under-23s league titles. In his first taste of men’s football, at National League Barrow, in 2016, he played 19 games without once tasting defeat. “He rubs off on other people with his hunger and desire,” Paul Cox, their manager, said.
He joined an ailing Shrewsbury Town in January 2017 and helped to keep the Shropshire club in League One. He was described by Kevin Nolan as a “leader” in a Notts County team hardly lacking in experienced elder statesmen last season. He lost just three times over 90 minutes in 29 appearances and left the Magpies second in the League Two table. And he earned rave reviews after he returned to League One in January, helping Scunthorpe United reach the play-offs.
When he’s in your team, Lester says, he finds a way to win. The successes during those loans are no coincidence. The Championship is a huge step to make but put a challenge in front of him, Lester says, and he’ll find a way to overcome it. Navigating a path into Forest’s first team, though, may be the biggest hurdle he’s faced to date.
In any other season, I would argue, Yates would have almost certainly made his first-team breakthrough at the City Ground this year - perhaps not as a regular, but as a fully-fledged first-team squad member to be called upon throughout the season. He may still stay, fight for a chance, and you would not put it past him to grasp one should it arise. Or he may once again venture out on loan in search of games. But Yates’ situation highlights how much the landscape at Forest has changed.
The only misgiving about Forest investing £25m on 11 new players this summer is that first team opportunities for these burgeoning talents are now going to be rare and precious. The Academy has been a solace during the years of decline Forest have endured. The pathway from youth team to first team, and its homegrown hue, has been an enduring source of pride.
A long season lies ahead and Karanka is correct to insist his squad will be vital. But in Forest’s opening two Championship fixtures Ben Osborn (plus Michael Dawson, who, against Bristol City, made his first Reds appearance in 13 years) has been the only homegrown player in the starting XI - quite a shift from four or five regular starters in recent seasons.
Jordan Smith was the substitute goalkeeper but with Luke Steele added to the ranks last week he may not be back-up to the other new arrival between the sticks, Costel Pantilimon, for much longer. Cash now has a couple of Portuguese starlets and Joe Lolley to compete for a starting berth with. Brereton, Yates and Worrall, meanwhile, were all omitted from the matchday squad (Worrall was suffering from illness) and face a new calibre of competition.
These academy graduates are just the players whose skill and verve in a Forest strip we have become familiar with over the past few seasons. It will take something pretty extraordinary for others to emerge this season.
Given the choice of competing in the upper echelons of the Championship - of fighting for a spot in the Premier League after a near 20-year exile - and giving these talented young players first team opportunities, well, it doesn’t take a genius to decipher which option Reds supporters would go for.
But it does make you wonder, with a squad as well stocked as Karanka’s, and in a new era under an owner with the financial reserves of Evangelos Marinakis, will the fruits of Forest’s academy be allowed to blossom?