Hi Alex, I sent this out the other day to someone and feel this is relevant to this article.

It's painful to listen to everyone guessing away in the dark! No one has any idea about this lad past or present, along with all the others and what they're capable & not capable of as…

— Simon Rea (@SimonRea) June 13, 2026

Hi Alex, I sent this out the other day to someone and feel this is relevant to this article.

It's painful to listen to everyone guessing away in the dark! No one has any idea about this lad past or present, along with all the others and what they're capable & not capable of as individuals. All have the own reasons for being there and are at massively different stages as individuals.

Someone needs to provide a bit of protection for now and speak up, not just for the lads that are there but for the ones that have just left and the ones that have got this to come in the future if nothing changes. There is no hiding that It's going to be another extremely difficult season for them all again through little fault of their own, with little to no help, extremely short on numbers and young.

Thankfully the trajectory of the club has changed dramatically but off the back of that the academy has moved to steeply & to quickly without the proper footing & are paying the price in every department!

I don't want to get into a back-and-forth about development and pathways as I'm in the middle of it but like all the older age groups there are some that need exposure & a chance to clear that final hurdle. If they fail in the process, then they fail. You'll never know what they are ready for else & you can't move on or progress without it!

To easy to say they're not ready for men's football from a far, of course they're not, but with a touch of patience, they have to be put through their limits in a first team training environment for a prolonged period in blocks as equals first. Integrated. Then they'll either the sink or swim. Most sink. This is also where you find if they are ready for a loan or not. No one is expecting a debut and that is all pie in the sky until this has all happened & they have proved themselves on MERIT.

There's not one professional at any standard that ever skipped this part of the process. Without it, there just stuck in a loop playing and learning from the same set of lads & coach's you've been with for 10 years.

Every bit of learning they need now needs to be off adults, they need to absorb the standards, the expectations, the pressures, what the week feels like mentally & physically & to start understanding the ginormous differences between academy football & the firing line. Without this vital link in the development chain everything stagnates and everyone gets disillusioned. And not just players.

I understand the clubs urgency to progress to the next stage, but it can't obliterate their obligation to development in the process. I lived through it with Baz & Trevor and with the same pressures one never trumped the other. People might be right and we might not have anyone ready to come through yet. But with the proper development program, we just might. And ALL that came before them through the Blues Academy were afforded the same with no guarantee whatsoever of any success within a first team environment.

And I'll leave you with this, in general a academy have either got to offer a pathway or money. You can't offer neither and expect to thrive. It takes away all direction and motivation from the players & makes almost impossible for the caching staff to implement anything in the latter stages and especially hard for recruitment to implement anything.

I've spent 14 years around this academy, five times a week and this is the first time the identity and core has disappeared and it has to get back into sync asap.

Hope this gives a little perspective & hope this helps