Al you've seen our mentality with Lucas and Insua and now Flanagan. Instead of giving our younger players time to develop and improve, we're on their back the moment they make mistakes and have poor games. That's something that needs to change and we need to trust them when the play as opposed to writing them off when they're 20/21 years old. It leads to us sticking to the old guard, regardless of the quality of their performances or the future of the club.
You need to make a statement that you are backing youth though, you have to make it clear that you are building for the future and that the players need the fans support. As a Club we do it half heartedly and as soon as the older players are fit they walk back into the team. The injection of youthful exuberance provided by the likes of Flanagan, Robinson and Spearing last season lifted the whole Club. The feature of last season under Kenny that pleased me most was the amount of energy the side had.
We need to stop sending out messages that the likes of Sterling is only involved because of our injuries and back the players. The likes of Flanagan, Robinson, Kelly, Coates, Spearing and Shelvey have all come in and done well. We need to back those hungry young players to the hilt because they are our future not the likes of Carra.
The two constants at the top of the Premiership for the last decade and a half have been United and Arsenal two Clubs that back their young players to the hilt, put up with the brickbats of the fans when things aren't going well but show an unerring faith in their young players. So what if some of the want it now idiots get on the back of the young players, it doesn't mean we have to give in to them. If we do we will be stuck in this incredibly destructive mindset that allows the idiots to dictate what we do as a Club. We don't need the do the most popular thing we need to do the right thing, we lost the knack of doing that twenty years ago and we need to have the balls to rediscover it.
If people don't want to support our young players then they f'ck off and support someone else's Auld Codgers.