Fantastic article, great stuff Roy, thanks for that.
The bits about a unifed ideology jump right out, and appeal to me hugely. That's pretty fundamental I think. Plus the demands placed on our senior players are such that I don't see our youngsters losing out by being to 'specialised' as it were - there's no doubt in my mind that the players who've managed to train with the first team and thus have Rafa's imput seem to have more chance of a decent career than the equivalents under Houllier. Hard to imagine Hobbs, say, not reaching Premiership level eventually, and would Warnock be on the fringes of the England side now if Houllier had stayed in charge for another couple of years?
The bit about Real Madrid is very telling as well. I don't know quite why, because to be fair I don't know a whole lot about their youth systems, but as soon as I read that my mind kind of went 'bing, Manchester United'. They seem to produce a lot of decent individuals, and it's great for their squad, but don't get the sense it's particularly integrated. Take Macheda and Welbeck for example - useful strikers no doubt but not ones I look at and see an obvious future for given the way Utd currently play. A good factory for the premiership perhaps, but the players you can see a clear future role for seem to be the exception rather than the rule, and tellingly they seem more often to be the bought in ones - EG the twins look certainties but the likes of Gibson, Welbeck look like they've been developed within a 4-4-2 framework - contrast that to Pacheco, Nemeth, Bruna et al in the reserves - make it or not it's clear to see how they could fit in, and how they were bought with the existing system(s) in mind - even Brouwer made complete sense in that respect, just to get the more promising lads used to that type of team shape.
Here's hoping that in a few years we'll be talking about Segura, McParland and McMahon as being right up there with Torres in terms of 'great Rafa signings'.
Also nice to have the Hamberg mystery somewhat cleared up - I had (well, prior to last season) always thought Rafa approved but obviously not.