Welcome back to The United Way! Ask any keen Football Manager player what their favourite aspect of the game is, and there’s a strong possibility that they would say developing young players. I’m no different, and luckily for me that melds perfectly with Manchester United’s youth development philosophy. With the end of season one approaching and our first youth intake now at the club, I thought this was the perfect time to talk through my approach to maintaining United’s incredible youth record and show off some of the club’s most talented youngsters.

There will be quotes dotted throughout from an incredible two-piece article from The Athletic, who had an all-access day with United’s academy. They are behind a paywall, sadly, but for anybody with an active subscription they are well worth a read. Part one can be found here!

An Unbelievable Record

I think I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves here. In a pre-academy leaflet that the club gives to the parents of prospective youngsters, there is the famous Sir Matt Busby quote ‘If you are good enough, you are old enough’, accompanied by pictures of first-team players who have come through the academy and the headline statistic: Over 4,200 consecutive games featuring an academy graduate. 

The statistics continue to stagger as the leaflet poses the question, ‘What makes our academy different?’ 

   1: ranked the leading English club for producing and developing players
85: years of matchday squad featuring academy graduates
46: academy graduates playing in Europe’s highest-ranked divisions
88: academy graduates currently playing professional football
246: academy graduates have made a first-team debut for Manchester United.

This is slightly outdated now, as last season Ethan Wheatley became Manchester United’s 250th academy player to make their first-team debut, but this just serves to add to the insanity of the numbers being presented. Between the start of the 2023/24 season and April 9th (around the time The Athletic’s article would have been finished/edited), United had given nearly three times the number of minutes to teenagers in the Premier League (3,637) than the rest of the division’s top six combined. By the end of the season, United had given more minutes to teenagers than any other side in the division.

I firmly believe that any manager who ends this record is likely to lose their job for it, such is the club’s pride in this astounding record. One thing is for sure, I don’t want it to be me who breaks the streak!

Youth Recruitment

I won’t just be relying on youth intakes and signing first-team ready wonderkids, I also want to supplement the youth teams with promising youngsters from other academies. 

Despite heavy criticism of Manchester United’s transfers over the last decade or so, recruiting players to join the academy has actually been a strength in recent years. Pre-Brexit, the likes of Willy Kambwala, Isak Hansen-Aarøen, Álvaro Fernández and of course, Alejandro Garnacho were all highly rated youngsters who were signed from abroad to bolster the ranks. Brexit has obviously had a huge impact on the ability of English clubs to acquire the best young foreign talent, and so United have turned to bringing in the likes of Harry Amass (Watford), Elyh Harrison (Stevenage) and the Fletcher brothers, Jack and Tyler (both Manchester City) in recent years.

Our mentality has always been to try to attract the best locals, but also the best globally. Local lads like Paul Scholes or Nicky Butt taught players like Cristiano Ronaldo about the club and the history, but at academy level that all stopped with Brexit. – Nick Cox

I’m not looking to flood the youth teams with hordes of young players, as too many will make giving each player enough minutes impossible. Instead, it’s about assessing which players are best suited to which age group, and then targeting players who can compliment what we have in house. This approach matches that of the club in real life, who as an example, specifically targeted Alejandro Garnacho because there were gaps in his age group.

In an ideal world, you should only ever have three or four gaps to fill to play alongside the eight or nine players who’ve come through. So last year we brought in the two Fletcher boys, Harry Amass and Gabriele Biancheri. That feels about right to me. But in the year when Garnacho turned 16, we had more gaps. We’re never trying to build a team, but a healthy pool of talent that is balanced and that can go and support the first team. – Nick Cox

The part of that quote that I find particularly interesting, and probably subconsciously already adhere to myself, is the mention that they aren’t looking to build a team. I’ll explain this fully later in the post, but United’s focus in academy football is developing the individual players, not cultivating winning sides.

Chelsea and Manchester City, two clubs who have dominated youth football in the last decade, do it a different way. Theirs is a trading model, with less likelihood of reaching the first team and more of being sold. They have surged past United in what they spent on youth after their takeovers in 2003 and 2008 and their brands are about winning at every level.

Talented young players will always be a precious commodity, but especially since Brexit the competition for the most promising youngsters is fierce. Particularly for United, as there are more professional clubs within an hours drive than anywhere else in the world. That means that the club focuses on retention of the players they have, with Under 21’s Manager Travis Binnion even calling it more important than recruitment. 

Although retention is important, it’s also important to take stock of when it may be time for players to move on. This is an area where United have adjusted their approach in recent years, and by their own admission taken inspiration from their Manchester rivals. 

United have started to sell young players who are looking unlikely to make a first-team breakthrough, with Zidane Iqbal arguably being the first casualty of this new approach. The fee of £850k was ridiculed by many, but the inclusion of a buy-back clause and a sell-on fee protects the club should the player kick on. If he doesn’t, it’s likely he may have ended up leaving on a free transfer anyway, and any fee is better than nothing. Similar deals have since followed, with the likes of Matěj Kovář, Facundo Pellistri, Will Fish, Willy Kambwala and Álvaro Fernández.

That is a deliberate policy change at United, with staff suspecting players going “stale and sour” if they stay at the club too long without getting an opportunity to play. That has led to a desire to sell players while using clauses and add-ons to protect themselves, taking inspiration from City in that area.

In game, I’ve continued the trend. Admittedly, I’ve not been including buy back clauses, but I’ve moved on seven young players already who I don’t see making it to first-team level, all including significant sell-on clauses.

To try and implement a similar approach to United’s in game, I’ll be looking to scout and sign a handful of promising domestic talents each season, in positions where our youth teams have clear gaps. I won’t, however, be scouring each youth intake and poaching players before they can sign contracts at their club. United are keen to try to do things in the ‘right’ way, and are up front with their approaches for players. Building relationships with selling clubs is also important to United, as it allows for a longer-term relationship where players could flourish on loan deals.

As he talks, players train who have arrived at United from City, Rochdale, Cardiff City and Derby County. Cox is conscious that he needs good relationships with selling clubs, that he might need to loan players back to them, but feels they can work together. 

This would apply more to more ‘established’ signings, the sorts of players who would come in on the fringes of first-team action. I have already made a few signings where we have allowed players to remain at the selling club for the remainder of their domestic season, and will continue to do so if I feel a signing does not have an immediate pathway to the first-team but is too talented for Under 21’s football. Travis Binnion calls them over-ripe fruits, and in regards to the likes of Jobe Bellingham, Agustín Giay and Faniel Tewelde, I’d be inclined to agree.

In terms of departures, I’ll be looking to continue to sell players once I’ve established they won’t make an impact at first-team level. The fee will be secondary to ensuring that a high sell on percentage is secured, as I look to develop players to at least go on to have a strong professional career, even if not at United.

I’ll be looking to cultivate these players by focusing on the retention of the players we have at the club. This doesn’t mean nobody will be released, nor does it mean I’ll sign every player from each youth intake. Rather, it means that I won’t just be focusing on the players who could go on to be superstars. I’ll be working to ensure every player hits as much of their potential as possible, no matter their eventual level.

We know every player isn’t going to end up in the first team, but we have to help them get as close to that as possible.  – Adam Lawrence.

Integration and Utilisation

Developing young players is one thing, but ensuring there is a pathway to the first-team and making sure they’re used correctly is crucial. 

The club has an admirable philosophy of ensuring that their academy players develop as people as well as footballers, and the article does a great job of explaining how they go about that. However, I’m limited by what I can do in-game, and therefore I’ll obviously be focusing solely on football decisions. 

As I mentioned earlier in the post, United don’t view the success of their youth teams in terms of silverware. Instead, they see supporting the first-team squad as the key objective, choosing to ‘run light’ and very often having players taken out of their matchday squads at short notice. This often means that Under 21’s matchday squads will be backfilled by the best of the Under 18s. Having several young players facing opponents years ahead of them in their development, plus of course the possibility of facing senior players in need of minutes, could lead to some huge defeats, but will also provide challenges that will stand players in good stead for the future.

Our duty is to the players, not the under-21s (team). That’s why we choose to sail close to the wind with our teams, going young and letting the players face huge challenges. We believe that will ultimately make them better. Our policy is, ‘Go young and go thin’. On Friday, our team was stretched against a more experienced Liverpool side. Brilliant; that’s what we want. They’ll learn a lot more from that. – Travis Binnion

The Under 21s campaign in season one has been a perfect example of this in action.

A seventh place finish with a strong, but not exceptional record goes to show that the Under 21s were often facing sides with players further along in their development, or bolstered by senior players. This is supported by the top five performers in the division, based on average rating.

Although it would be unfair to call any of these players ‘established’ at first-team level, Jack Moorhouse sticks out like a sore thumb here. The others are all players who played in multiple first-team games throughout the season, whereas Moorhouse is a long way down the pecking order for players I would want to bring in for any first team involvement.

The Under 21 season ends with a knockout tournament, with the top sixteen sides competing. Our Under 21 side managed to reach the final, beating Nottingham Forest (10th), Derby County (16th) and Manchester City (12th) along the way. In the final, they faced Chelsea’s Under 21s, previously mentioned as a club who invest a lot of money into the success of their youth sides.

Chelsea fielded an array of players who are far too good for Under 21s football, showing their focus on winning youth team silverware over developing the players as efficiently as possible. They beat our Under 21s 4-0, but I would estimate the transfer fees paid for their matchday squad exceed ours by about £40 million. In Gabriel Slonina and Carney Chukwuemeka, they had £20 million of talent that didn’t even make it onto the pitch!

Given my transfer dealings in season one, the United line up for this game could theoretically have included Paul Wanner, Jobe Bellingham, Agustín Giay, Faniel Tewelde and Ruben van Bommel, if I had tried to follow Chelsea’s approach. However, after half a season with the Under 21s I decided Paul Wanner needed to be stretched a little, so he joined Sheffield Wednesday on loan, van Bommel instantly became a first-team member, and the others all remained with their old clubs on loan as previously mentioned. Winning this match instead of losing it (never a guarantee, of course) would not have changed the individual development of any of the players involved; however, four productive loan spells and first-team involvement have been a great help in their improvement. 

Loans then, are going to be a crucial part of the development pathway. I’m not a fan of having a load of 16 and 17-year-olds out on loan – as I’ve already mentioned the Under 18s have quite a high match load by backfilling for the Under 21s so they’ll get plenty of game time and benefit from our higher level of facilities. However, there will be no set policy based on age, and each player’s situation will be taken on its merits.

I’ll also be looking at adjusting my expectations for players breaking through. In the past, I’ve essentially written off any young player that either wasn’t good enough by 18/19 to start playing semi-regularly, or any player that I felt was needing too many loans to improve to the level we needed. This was essentially because I was expecting every young player I brought through to be one of the best at the club immediately, no matter the level of club I’ve been at. This is not only unrealistic, but also gave me issues with squad registration, as in many of my previous saves I’ve reached a point where I didn’t have enough home grown players to register a full squad. It’s going to be important to not only give players enough time to develop as much as possible, but also time their introduction to the first-team. A player may be talented by 20, but if their pathway is blocked, there’s no reason not to expose them to first-team football elsewhere until a space for them opens up. A 22-year-old breaking into the first-team squad for the first time can still be a valuable squad member, especially as a home grown player.

Loans are a key part of player development, though there are outliers such as Rashford and now Mainoo who don’t need one. Lingard had four loans from 2012-15, Scott McTominay took until he was 21 to be physically strong enough for regular senior football. Talent progression is not linear.

It probably won’t be often that I integrate a young player with no loan football at all; it takes a special talent to make the leap seamlessly, and it generally only comes around through fortuitous circumstances (Rashford due to an injury crisis and Mainoo taking advantage of a poor United midfield spring to mind). However, if a young player who is now too good to be playing Under 21s football can fill a gap in the squad, I will always look to promote them before I bring in a new player.

Given a choice, Ten Hag would keep the best young players at the club as he sometimes needs them to join in training, but in November it was explained to him by the since-departed director of football John Murtough that, while he might want them, it would be better for their development if they went out on loan.

In season one, I’ve probably gone a bit over the top in handing out minutes to academy players, if I’m being completely honest. Six youth team players (outside of the likes of Gore, Wheatley and Forson who have been promoted to the first-team squad this season) have made appearances in all competitions, amassing a total of 1023 minutes. 

I think it’s very easy in Football Manager to drop a couple of youngsters into the line-up for games your team should win, and them not really look out of place. This has meant that I’ve been far too easily tempted to skip over some of our squad depth options (McTominay, Fernández, Taremi etc) and use our youth players as rotation options instead, especially in the Europa League. 

None of this is to say that the players haven’t performed well when called upon; it may not be a huge sample size, but there hasn’t been a poor performance between them. However, it feels like a ‘gamey’ approach, rather than the realistic approach I’m looking for, and I think it’s important to look back on things like this and question whether they’re the way you truly want to do things. 

Next season, I’ll be looking to earmark maybe two or three players who will stay with the youth teams but have semi-regular first-team involvement. Outside of them, other players will only get opportunities if there are first-team injuries in their positions.

Fans who are predisposed to support the youth system often say, ‘Throw in the kids’ in moments of frustration, but most kids are not ready for regular Premier League football and Sir Alex Ferguson, among others, has spoken about the harm caused by placing premature and damaging pressure on young footballers. Equally, United must ensure young players feel they have a pathway and are learning at the right club.

So the plan is to stretch the Under 18s thin, focusing on progression over results. The best of the Under 21s will go out on loan, and the best of the rest will be the ones to get some first-team opportunities when appropriate.

The Talent

I thought I’d round the post off by taking a look at some of the talent I’m most excited about, both already at the club and in the first youth intake. I haven’t included players that I’ve brought to the club, like Wanner or Tewelde, as I’ll mention them more as and when they break into the first-team.

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Tyler is comfortably the most technically proficient youngster at the club, and if it was just based on this ability I could see him doing a Mainoo and Rashford and breaking through as a teenager without the need for a loan move. He has strong mental ability for his age, too, and this gives me confidence that he will develop to be the real deal. However, his physical attributes are not sufficient for regular first-team football, particularly his strength and stamina. I’d like him to be quicker, too, but this is less important given his ability to read the game. I’d like to think Tyler may be able to secure a Championship loan next season, which I think would do him the world of good, but even if he only gets a League One/Two move I still think a full season of men’s football would help to bulk him up with a view to integrating him in 2026.

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Harry seems to be pretty close to a first-team breakthrough in real life, and impressed during pre-season. I’m not sure that in game his potential matches what many believe he will go on to be, but he’s still a very capable young full-back with room to grow. Harry does have one big obstacle to overcome that he doesn’t seem to for real – Luke Shaw is nowhere near as injury prone.

He’s not a million miles away from the level Álvaro Fernández is currently at, and is four years his junior, so there’s no doubt in my mind that he can at least go on to be a useful squad option. Whether he will ever become good enough to be a regular starter, I’m not too sure, but the building blocks are all there. He’s a very well rounded full-back, capable of going down the outside or inverting into midfield. A loan could well do him good, but I’m not sure he’d currently garner interest from clubs at a level that will stretch him. If he doesn’t and Fernández moves on, which is likely as there is active interest in him, then we could instead keep him with the Under 21s and look to use him as a third choice left-back behind Shaw and Calafiori.

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I usually find it more difficult to integrate attacking players, as even the most talented can often struggle to make an impact in terms of actual output early on. Lacey actually gives me Shola Shoretire vibes; there’s no doubt he’s incredibly talented and the hype around him at such a young age almost makes it feel that he’s a dead cert to succeed. However, I think it’s important to temper expectations as he still has a long way to go. Lacey has a lot of strengths; he’s technically very good already, has decent mentals with elite flair, and is fairly quick and agile without being explosive. If we can work on a few of these aspects and get his pace, off the ball and work rate up in particular, then we could definitely have an excellent wide creator on our hands.

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Elyh Harrison has had a strange season. With Radek Vítek going out on loan to Wycombe Wanderers I was sure that Harrison would be able to play Under 21s football, while possibly even getting a first-team debut towards the end of the Europa League League Phase. However, for some reason he was never selected and I didn’t want to break the realism by interfering, so I had him training with the first-team for a while. With no match experience to support that, though, development was slow. In January I sent him on loan to Stockport County, and he’s played half a season as their undisputed first choice goalkeeper which has done him the world of good. I’ll probably look to keep loaning him out for a few years now, as our goalkeeping unit is fairly settled and breaking through as a keeper isn’t easy.

Youth Intake

Part of the reason that I left it until towards the end of season one to write about my academy plans is so that I could also discuss the first youth intake when it came. In the original preview, I was teased with the prospect of a five star group. The reality didn’t quite match up, but it’s still a very good intake.

With eleven players now aged 18 and therefore moving up to Under 21s football next year, I’ve signed ten players from this intake, with three in particular that I’m excited about.

CHARLES | FALLON-MYLER | GEDLING | GREEN | JONES
NAIRN | POWER | SALGUEIRO | SAMBOR | SYMINGTON

Jamal Charles – D RL, WB R

Defensively, Jamal already looks like a handy little player. Strong tackling, marking and positioning make me think that he could probably hold his own a year or two above his own. He’s not great on the ball, and his physicals need a lot of work, but the building blocks are definitely there.

Charlie Sambor – DM

The coaches don’t have quite the same faith in Charlie’s potential as they did before the candidates friendly, but there’s no doubt he could go on to be a really handy holding midfielder. He’s never going to be an overly creative player, but he has all the tools to do the dirty work for a midfield partner. I’m impressed by his strength and decision making in particular, and there are no obvious weaknesses, so if we can make him a bit more mobile while his game advances I could see him making a first-team breakthrough.

Eoghann Nairn – AM L

In the age of 4-3-3’s, Inverted Wingers and Inside Forwards, it seems the traditional winger is a dying breed. However, Eoghann could become a mighty fine example of one. Already capped for the Scottish Under 21’s at the age of 16, there’s no doubt he’s a talented boy and can already hurt defences in year groups ahead of his. He’ll need to work on his dribbling if he is ever going to be elite at it, and mentally he is very raw, but at 16 that is to be expected. He’s definitely the graduate I’m most excited by this year.

Once the season ticks over and the 18-year-olds make their way into the Under 21 squad, this is what we’ll be left with. Yep, just the intake players. I’m not fussed about having ‘squad depth’ in the Under 18s, if greyed out players need to fill gaps then so be it – the focus is on the development of the individuals, and a squad with multiple options per position means that some players will be missing out. As I mentioned above, in the recruitment section of the post, I’ll be looking to supplement intakes with a couple of signings per year where we look short. Next year, a new keeper and striker will be on the agenda, but only if the right deals are out there.

Until next time…