Everyone talks about 'it's all about development' and to a certain point that's obviously true. All our successful periods in the past have come when we had a backdrop of successful youth teams. For me at U/16 level and below it's primarily development but once you hit U/18's its both development and winning. Success breeds success and it becomes a habit. It develops desire, confidence and maturity.
You're starting to build a mindset and resilience that's necessary to enter senior football. These kids are all around 17 and the good ones will be close to the first team so it's too late to just flick a switch and say..."ok it's all about winning now".
That has to come earlier.
I think our lack of success in the FA Youth Cup over the last decade is partly down to this lack of balance.
Yep, completely agree.
I thought that as I was reading some of the posts but didn't respond as everything's so black or white on social media and this issue just becomes a battle between 'Caring only about short term winning vs Taking the long view of developing players'. But, as you say, it's not either/or - there's a balance between the two and getting that right is what it's all meant to be about.
Of course we should continue promoting them when they're ready for their development, and not keep them down levels longer than necessary just to think about short term results. But part of that player development is mentality, and, as you say, at United that's about developing a winning mentality, not getting used to losing.
There's extra reasons for the collective 8-0 losses so far, so this isn't a knee jerk reaction to those. I'm sure results will pick up. It's just a more general point that you can't just completely dismiss results from U18's upwards, as breeding a winning mentality and getting yourself over the line to deliver trophies, is a useful part of player development as well.