There's a group of 25 or so young Irish players (23 or under) that I have been following this season to see how they progress, they range in age from last year's under 17 category up to 23 year olds - what I would consider to be our 25 best young players, although that's obviously a matter of personal opinion. What's very promising though is that 20 of them have now seen first team action so far this season, either in the Premier League, Championship, League 1 or the cups.
FWIW the 20 are Parrott, Connolly, Obafemi, Molumby, Knight, Idah, Collins, Smallbone, O'Shea, Travers, Kilkenny, Cullen, Masterson, T O'Connor, Crowley, Manning, O'Hara, Coventry, Curtis and Kelleher.
Two of the five that haven't played are Bazunu and Hodge who are both 17 year olds at Man City and who you wouldn't expect to have played first team to be fair (plus Hodge has been injured).
The other three though are the three lads at Celtic, O'Connor, Afolabi and Connell who haven't seen a minute of first team action between them, not even an unused sub appearance that I can remember. They must be going spare in Glasgow watching everyone else at their age group progress while they're kicking their heels in the reserves, playing very little football and none that would be of any benefit to them. It's sad to see what's happening with them really. Hopefully one or two of them will get out on loan before the end of the month, I mean the standard of the SPFL is absolutely dreadful, surely the other teams in the league must have some interest in them if there's no interest from England?