United producing crop of youngsters ‘will probably never happen again’ says Redknapp
Harry Redknapp believes Manchester United are unlikely to produce another crop of successful home-grown players.
Having nurtured the likes of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Gary and Phil Neville during Sir Alex Ferguson’s trophy-laden years as manager, United have recently made a number of big-money signings in an attempt to improve their squad.
The sale of striker Danny Welbeck to Arsenal has been seen as evidence of a change of culture at Old Trafford, with Ferguson’s former assistant Mike Phelan suggesting it showed the club’s youngsters are being given less chance to develop.
And QPR boss Redknapp, whose side face United on Sunday, said: “It will probably never happen again when you get a group of kids come through in one spell.
“They buy players in the main. They had the Busby Babes and then suddenly Fergie had a bit of luck, the same as I had a bit of luck at West Ham when six players came out of the youth team and played for England.
“That can happen and it happened at United, who do produce more kids than most clubs because the best schoolboys want to play for United, so they’ve always got a better chance of producing players than other clubs.”
Having finished seventh last season and made a poor start to this term, losing at home to Swansea, the Red Devils have spent big in the transfer market.
The likes of Radamel Falcao have been brought in and Redknapp believes his team will face a very different United to the one Swansea embarrassed on the opening day of the campaign.
He explained: “In the first game of the season, if you were Swansea, you’d be delighted going there because you looked at the team and it wasn’t a particularly strong United team in all honesty.
“Now suddenly it’ll look a different team. They’ve brought some top players in. They’ve got quality players and I think they’re now capable again this year, certainly of being back in the Champions League positions.”
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13/09/2014 @ 5:49 am
Redknapp talking trash like the rest of the english managers and media, he should look at his own qpr, buying a whole new team of senior players, whilst man utd still blooding the young coming through the academy like lindegard, blackett, keane, wilson, where there are more than 10 players named in the first team that are from the academy. Even fergie and moyes didnt start or name that many academy boys in the first team, which resulted in the talented ones leaving like rossi, pique, pogba, diuf etc.
Redknap, phelan, owen, neville and all the other English pundits and media are just sore that its blatantly clear english players like welbeck, cleverly are second rate and not world class like they have been singing all along, and they are just trying to build a smoke screen. How can we give serious consideration to Redknapp’s remarks when he was singing praises of Moyes appointment a year back. All the epl managers especially english are ganging up on lvg cause they are afraid of what he is accomplishing at man utd and prefer a moron like moyes at the helm so that they can compete, but they know that lvg is tactically more superior than their archaic tactics and quite frankly he is way smarter than these high school rejects.