Daniel Kelly

Maybe not but wasn't the talk that Tierney wasn't necessarily as highly rated as his career suggests he should have been? It wasn't until he trained with the first team regularly that it became evident how good he was.

They need a chance.

 

6 should be enough.

Our squad should be a solid core of around 16-8 players, supplemented by a couple of academy players and a couple of "projects" - like Holm. Loan out half a dozen other projects/academy players.

It's infuriating the money we spend on crap and then we can't shift them.

 

Couldn't find the story but yeh it's Morrison - just signed for QPR https://www.qpr.co.uk/news/2024/july/05/profile-liam-morrison/

Was Hepburn the other lad who went to Bayern. Quick Google says he's on loan in Austria but aye the Queens Park loan doesn't look great for him.

 

Aye, it was a fluke. He got left behind from some development team trip and the first team for whatever reason needed a few lads to make up numbers in training.

Think Delia or Collins liked the look of him and kept him in the squad and he took his chance from there.

Another example of why we should be giving more opportunities as first team football is different from development team that a lot of assessments at that level are missing important information on the player in the actual situation.

Partly why Kelly and Vata impressed me. Took no time to settle and get involved when given the opportunity.

 

Difficult not to be flippant here, as recognising the need for a pathway to the first team manager is something..

But, what experience and skills does Darren O'Dea have for the role?

We'll continue to lose our best prospects if we don't change..

 

He's a Sellick man. That's it.

I know it doesn't always work this way and it's an easy observation to make...but 3 of the most important staff members in our academy set up are O'Dea, McManus and Hayes.

2 cloggers of centre backs and a run of the mill Scottish Premiership player whose biggest strength was his engine. Why are they being entrusted with developing intelligent, technical footballers?

 

What does them being CB's and a "run of the mill" player who played in Scotland have to do with anything???

 

Yeah but there’s at least 6 I could name now under 21 who could do with a loan for some first team football. Then like you say if we need to shift some older players. It then means if we’re promising a loan system/progression when the younger players sign contracts we might not actually be able to follow through with it with these new rules

 

That it doesn't fill me with much confidence when it comes to them coaching our academy players and helping create technical players.

As I said, it doesn't always work that way but two old school, blood and snotters centre backs being key personnel involved in nurturing modern day footballers isn't ideal.

Remains to be seen if they're good coaches.

 

Darren O'Dea has literally lived the transition from youth team to first team at Celtic and also has youth coaching experience with ourselves and Motherwell. He's working in close proximity to Rodgers everyday, and Brendan clearly rates him. Not every ex-Celt will be a * coach. O'Dea generally comes across pretty well.

Also, you dont need to be a technically talented or graceful footballer to be able to coach technical footballers, that's daft to suggest.

 

Hence why I've caveated it twice.

O'Dea might well be an amazing coach. We don't know. But as has been said plenty, how fortunate are we that the best youth coaches we can find always seem to be ex-Celtic players or guys kicking about the Motherwell, Dundee United etc academies and right under our nose.

 

We can loan out as many players who are under 21 and also have been at the club for 3 seasons since the age of 15 as we want, they don't count towards the total.

 

Part of the percieved nepotism is going to be related to the human side of things. A big part of coaching youth players will be how you interact with them and motivate them, whilst also keeping their feet on the ground. We know how O'Dea, McManus and Hayes are as people, they're all leaders and motivators, they've been captains/vice-captains. Two of them have also lived what the young guys are going through as a youth player at the biggest team in the country and will have a good grasp of how to manage the expectation/outside influences that comes with that for a teenager.

These things are important. Sure, we probably can go out and get better technical youth coaches, or maybe they're great coaches, as you said, we don't know. What we can't ignore is the experience these guys have as players and how valuable that can be for the younger guys. The coaching side of things can be worked on, if it needs to be

 

You've already basically said it, you've no idea of how the operate or coach, so pretty much you're moaning about something you don't know about

 

Well said Zander.

Folk forget that O'Dea and McManus didn't just walk into a job at Celtic straight from retirement.

They cut their bones coaching youth players at Motherwell - probably the best club in Scotland to be at getting youth coaching experience.

Youth academy prospects should be looking up to these two guys - both of whom broke into the team as youngsters, one had a decent career, the other a former club captain and both international players for their countries.

 

None of us know how good they are.

As I've quite plainly said, it would be the greatest stroke of luck known to man that the best coaches we can get just all happen to be former players who have very little previous coaching experience, if any.

@Zander I agree with a lot of what you've said. I have no issues with some of these guys being involved with the academy. It's not all just about coaching. But there needs to be a greater mix of former players and more "external" coaches. Guys who have cut their teeth from elsewhere and have a proven track record.

 

He's * anyway.
Poor attitude.
We can't risk playing youth.

Something along those lines?

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That's true, but in the case of those two you mentioned. Darren O'Dea joined Motherwell as a coach in May 2019 and left them for us in September 2019. McManus was coaching for a bit longer, 18 months at Motherwell before coming here.

Again, I have no issue with them being involved. But when they joined the club they were essentially learning on the job. Why not get in more experienced coaches with a better track record for them to work alongside?

Right now our B team, the most important part of the academy process where it's really time for them to prepare for the first team, is being coached by McManus and Hayes (who is taking up his first coaching role).

I don't believe for a second that's the best possible combination of coaches we can get to coach our best academy products.

 

He has * all experience of this role.

That's the issue (along with many others), it's great that we have painted a picture of doing something, but it's just a reshuffle of the same usual suspects getting paid to do the same thing.

End result of 17 years of Lennox town, painted to us as an academy project as well - was 7 players to have made a dent in the first team. Of which Welsh and Ralston are two of them.

Anyone remotely thinking that O'Dea is gonna fix anything in this reshuffle is just clapping along to the board and is exactly what the board are hoping for.

5 years and O'Dea should be showing progress of talent going through what ever he feels a pathway is (again what experience he has here is zero, so it's either do what his master tells him to do, or he will be throwing darts), but we all know fine well in 5 years we will be staring at the next Kelly type player who will be moving along for free.


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