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Saints’ Checkatrade Trophy campaign came to a dramatic halt in the rain at Northampton on Tuesday night and left the club’s famed academy system with more soul searching to do.
Whilst the manner of their exit – 3-0 up with 17 minutes to go only to collapse to 3-3 and a penalty shootout defeat – captured the headlines on the day, it is the wider context of how the academy is performing that is of greater importance than one result.
A failure to make it out of the group stages of the Checkatrade Trophy is only indicative of a wider malaise in results.
The under-23s were relegated last season and haven’t exactly started this campaign firing on all cylinders. Likewise, the under-18s are a little hit and miss.
While you wouldn’t expect Saints to abandon their principles, there are obviously questions to answer when so much money is being invested into the academy system.
In many ways the investment is logical.
Even if you are spending several million a year, given the cost of buying a first team player you only really need one to make it through every few years. If they are later sold on then it is an extra financial bonus.
If you end up producing a truly world class talent then their sale could fund the academy for a decade.
But when you aren’t producing players, there is an inevitable focus on whether it is truly worth it, especially when the first team are struggling to an extent and fans are baying for greater investment.
The truth is that the academy cupboard is looking fairly empty at the moment in terms of players who are expected to challenge at first team level.
There might be the odd one who gets in and around, but no talent that is obviously screaming out to be involved on a regular basis.
It has been the same story for a few years, where really only James Ward-Prowse has made the big step up.
Even he is struggling for starts under Mauricio Pellegrino meaning that Saints, for all the talk of the ‘Southampton Way’ and the philosophy of playing youngsters, are doing the same as most other top flight teams - relying on players they are buying in.
It doesn’t matter how good the marketing is, a quick glance at a teamsheet tells you all you need to know.
The demotion of Jack Stephens, not technically an academy product but a young English talent, is another example.
He preformed superbly in the second half of last season, having been given a chance really by fate as Jose Fonte left, Saints couldn’t get a replacement and then Virgil van Dijk got injured.
Van Dijk has spent the summer doing his best to get a move, and is now back in the team.
At the same time Saints have invested £15m in another foreign central defender in Wesley Hoedt.
With Maya Yoshida in the mix as well, Stephens now appears to have gone from first team regular to fourth choice, and we are discounting Jan Bednarek from that equation at the moment as well.
You can make the case he is the fourth best centre half at the club, but even so it just proves that Saints are really not that different to anybody else.
They realise the brutal reality of trying to compete in the Premier League, and though they would like to promote young talent, it cannot come at the expense of results, and so van Dijk is welcomed back regardless and big money has been spent on another Dutchman.
Ronald Koeman knew the reality. Despite the misgivings above him in the club over his supposed frustration at the lack of young talent, he wasn’t going to put his neck on the line to play players he felt weren’t good enough.
Claude Puel had a lot more games to manage but did give youngsters a go, indeed he often talked about it as a priority in his job. Stephens, Sam McQueen and Josh Sims, to name a few, got a lot more opportunities than they might have expected.
Puel ended up getting the sack for his efforts.
Now there is Pellegrino and it looks more like the Koeman era in terms of youngsters. Saints need results and blooding young players you are not sure about doesn’t seem like the best way to get them.
Saints are still talked about as having a truly exceptional academy.
That is based on not only history going back some time, but also the slightly more recent purple patch that produced the likes of Walcott, Bale, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lallana and co.
However, the truth is that those players have long since come through the system and moved on.
Also gone are the majority of the people that recruited them and then coached them.
Much of what was so good about the academy as it was - the people – has changed.
This is the current iteration of what is being produced. That is not to say that what is being done is incorrect, or that there aren’t talented people involved in the academy, but it takes a lot of time to settle a system and get that pipeline flowing, to get youngsters through from kids to being first team ready.
It might be a long time before we can really see the results of what the academy set-up as it is these days can produce.
And, in the meantime, it is unlikely we will see that many home grown youngsters in the first team.
With that in mind it might be time to stop re-treading tales of past academy glory. Talk is cheap and you should only really boast of your philosophies of playing young players if it is something you can back up.
But perhaps we also should not get too caught up in woe and angst over what is currently happening, including the Checkatrade Trophy exit.
Surely the smartest move for now is try and get some unity behind a common vision and look towards the future.
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