Rocco Vata

He’s good enough.

We have a really bad habit of waiting far too long to throw youngsters in the deep end and it * their development.

We rarely do it, but when we do it normally works out quite well.

 

This is exactly why im not jumping up and down about Vata. Id be concerned if he wasn't performing at that level.

 

He has noticeably beefed up, which is a good sign that he is taking his career seriously as it is something that a lot of our young players lack is the physique to compete in senior football.

I know he was offside but I would have liked him to stick away the one he pulled down and tried to go round the keeper.

Might have just been the conditions but barring the first touch for that one he burst through the rest of the time it wasn’t secure enough.

At 18 I would prefer he stayed and went on loan to another team in the league. Given Motherwell may be a good shout as they just lost that young boy from Arsenal. Somewhere he will play regularly. We could badly do with academy players making the grade and staying here for a bit.

 

I like him and given he's been knocking on the door of the first team for a couple of seasons now it is poor management that he's not been involved more, to the point he and we are looking at moving him on.

Think we should try our best to tie him down on a new deal and get him loaned out til summer.

 

Nail on the head there. This is the big issue we have to be able to provide a proper bridge to the first team from our academy via the B team. Until we can get that team into the sfl league pyramid we simply do not have that bridge to the first team. We really need to be kicking up a fuss and banging on that drum constantly with the sfl to make it happen. Until then I would like to see us use loan deals to other spl and championship teams on a much larger scale as the for now option and have the B team while stuck as they are be more a team full of younger academy players.

 

Is it bad management if he isn’t showing enough to be around the team on match days? Surely that’s down to him to work hard and prove he deserves to be in the match day squad ahead of others. Or not wanting a new deal no 18 year old should be demanding game time needs to work for it.

Is he good enough he’s playing against guys in the lowland league so hard to judge if he’s good enough to play week in and week out for us. Not sure what everyone is basing he’s good enough on?

I’d let him sign a new deal and go out on loan to see if he is as mentioned good enough for us.

 

I think we need to be willing to play these younger guys or have them on the bench more often - as you say the lowland league isn't a good enough gauge of where they're at. Home games against weaker teams if we're 2-3 goals up, league cup games another opportunity to play these guys to see if they're good enough.

It's poor management in the sense that even when lads come in and play well (see Frame for example) that its almost always through necessity and not a planned pathway from B team to first team.

 

I think they can only play in a few first team games and that prevents anymore games in the lowland league, may have changed tho

 

If that's the case then I don't really see the benefit of the B team being in that league then.

 

I’ve raised this point before….but our youth team isn’t good enough to win the league they’re in at the minute. We’d probably get relegated from league 2

 

Aye it's 5 first team games then they are banned from the B team, it's a joke

 

We've let the best of them away on loan, we finished 3rd last season and could have won it this year full strength I think

 

that's ridiculous

 

5 in each half of the season.

So they could play 5 before winter and 5 after.

I don't mind that rule, of they're getting more than 5 games in the first team they're a member of the first team and above the B team at that point.

 

Even 5 competitive games across the season would be fair enough. Like if someone plays 5 times for the first team in a season they shouldn't be anywhere near that lowland league.. if otherwise we essentially would have a constant stream of first team players coming back from injury playing a couple games for the b team to get back to fitness. Would be very unfair

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Of that is correct we should be using it to the max

 

Na, there's age restrictions too for colts teams, it's not a B team in the full perspective that way. I believe we're allowed one over 33 year old player and it's U21 otherwise

 

Agreed they would but thats because we are in the catch 22 situation of not having the correct platform to have a proper B team which can be a bridge to the first team from the academy. Have a team in the sfl system and that will change very quickly IMHO.

 

Contract talks have Opened back up Mentioned on the Transfer show SSN