Aston Villa’s new academy manager Mark Harrison is hoping the club can prove its worth when trying to recruit some of the best talents in the country.
Despite spending a number of seasons in the Championship, Villa have always had a strong academy and the rise of club captain Jack Grealish is proof of that.
However, Villa supporters will be hoping to see the rise of more youngsters and now that they are in the Premier League, they will be hoping the club’s academy can prove its worth even further.
But Harrison doesn’t want Villa to fall into the trap of not being able to pick out local youngsters, or even lose them to other so-called bigger clubs, as he used striker Louie Barry as an example – he left West Brom in the summer to join Spanish giants Barcelona. [BBC Sport].
“The medium-term is to make sure we’re competitive so we can recruit players for Aston Villa, an academy that is well respected throughout the country,” Harrison told Villa’s official YouTube channel.
“So if we approach a player somewhere in the country, we’re competing with the so-called bigger academies, the Chelsea’s, the Manchester City’s, the Arsenal’s, the Liverpool’s and, equally, locally. We’ve got to make sure that locally Aston Villa are the club that everybody wants to come to.
“A player (Barry) left West Bromwich Albion to go to Barcelona. He lives in Sutton Coldfield, he’s a Villa fan, his dad’s a Villa fan, that just can’t happen in the future.”
With Dean Smith at the helm, he has a history of giving the younger players an opportunity, as he proved during his days with Brentford and Walsall.
Whilst Villa spent heavily in the summer, and during their time in the Championship, it does seem that once the club can get some proper stability then the fans will start to see what Smith can do in regards to developing younger players.
At this moment in time, he has had to contend with helping the club earn promotion over such a short space of time and then build up his squad once again over the summer when a number of senior players were released.
Either way, things are looking much brighter at Bodymoor Heath!
