Villa News Speaking to Dan Bardell

Sat 4 February 2023 20:00, UK

From the outside looking in, the Aston Villa academy is one of the most successful youth setups across English football, but dig a little deeper, and a few problems start to arise.

The prestigious Bodymoor Heath training ground has been brimming with young talent ever since the new ownership of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens took charge in 2018, with the Young Lions famously lifting the FA Youth Cup trophy in 2021.

The successful team was dubbed the Golden Generation of the Aston Villa academy, with the likes of Carney Chukwuemeka, Louie Barry, Kaine Kesler-Hayden and Arjan Raikhy all playing prominent roles in the team’s success.

However, despite Jack Grealish and Jacob Ramsey rising through the ranks and making a name for themselves in the Aston Villa first-team, an alarmingly large number of these players have failed to make the grade.

Two years on and Barry’s struggles on loan at MK Dons have continued to grow worryingly longer, Raikhy still remains on the periphery of proceedings of the Villa first-team, while Chukwuemeka decided to move to Chelsea in the summer after struggling for game time under previous manager Steven Gerrard.

Now obviously, breaking into the Villa first-team is no mean feat, and the squad that Unai Emery currently possess is among the most talented in the club’s history, but you would still hope to see some signs of young players bursting onto the scene.

Speaking exclusively to Villa News, The Athletic’s Dan Bardell expressed his concern at the lack of players who have broken into the first team from the FA Youth Cup winning side.

“No one has really come through from that team yet,” he said.

“This is actually quite often the way when a team wins the Youth Cup, and everyone thinks the club has a Golden Generation, but most of the time, a few of them struggle to break through and play in the first team.

“Villa have invested a lot in their academy, and this is the time when you want to see some of that coming to fruition. You really want to see that academy start to provide the first team with players, but over the last 10/15 years, it hasn’t actually provided many names.

“Andre Green had a flirtation with the first team in the Championship but lost his confidence in the end due to a number of injuries.

“And since Jack Grealish came through the ranks, there was a big gap to Jacob Ramsey then coming through in the Premier League, and you just don’t want these big gaps to keep cropping up.

“If you’re going to be a successful club, you have to provide your first team with academy players coming through, and Villa haven’t done enough of that in the last ten years or so.

“However, when the owners first came in, they recognised that Villa’s Academy needed work, and they put a lot of money into it, brought a lot of exciting young talent as well, so hopefully, over the next few years, we will start to see more young players progress.”

The next of these players stepping up to play under Emery at Villa Park could be either Kadan Young or Kaine Kesler-Hayden this term after the Spaniard culled a number of more experienced players from his first-team squad during the winter window.

With Danny Ings sold to West Ham in January and Cameron Archer sent packing on loan to Middlesbrough, the door has been left ajar for Young, in particular, to barge down.

Whether the 17-year-old will be given the opportunity to shine on the Villa Park stage is still questionable, but he is likely to be the next cab off the rank in attack for the remainder of the season.

In other Aston Villa news, Unai Emery clearly wants to play one particular Villa attacker in a central role after this stat reveal.