Quote Originally Posted by Adrianovic View Post
This kid has got real potential, according to a few people I know who get to Forest academy games and one and a half million pounds of Abramovich's money.

He has ripped up the FA Youth Cup, scoring five against Wigan's academy before scoring another four against Southampton's youngsters in the following round. That was the last time he wore a Forest shirt.

Basically, collectively Forest have dropped a bollock.

Billy Davies was a very fine football manager for us, but he had no time for the youth academy and took a very short-term view on the playing staff as much as he could. So we stuck with established players and loaned more in when we were running low, rather than turning to the academy.

Bamford was not training with the first team squad for the first few months of the season under McClaren and that, apparently, did not go down very well. Especially in contract negotiations, with his father being a bit miffed that at 18 he wasn't becoming more involved in the set up.

Anyway, Steve Cotterill started to have him train with the first team squad and even gave him a couple of run outs, but no more than that. Despite Forest failing to score for seven or eight games on the spin at one stage, and only scoring in three of the last 15 games or something, Cotterill told the local press the best thing for Bamford's development would be to go on loan to a League Two side.

Enter Chelsea, who are keen to add young home-based players. They make their interest known to Bamford's family and his head is turned. The only thing in this situation which a Championship team could offer that Chelsea could not is the prospect of immediate first team football, but given we've just not used him despite our strikers misfiring, that wasn't on the table.

While we could have hung around until the end of the season and let it go to a tribunal, taking the £1.5m was the best option. Chelsea only paid Man City £3.5m for Dan Sturridge, who at 19 had already played quite a few Premier League games and had been selected by England at a number of youth levels. To the tribunal, Bamford would be a kid with a couple of sub appearances in the second tier, so we wouldn't have seen near £1.5m.

If we'd given him a chance he might have stayed, but we haven't and in modern football these young lads are a valuable commodity.
well put adrianovic, so is he irish or what?