I'm not going to bother updating the list until after the summer when a new thread would probably better for the new season.Originally Posted by GroundFootball
Karl Moore equalised for Man City's U-18 side, including Garry Breen and Michael Daly, in a 1-1 game with West Brom to help them clinch 3rd spot in the U-18 league.
Review here: http://mcfcreserves-academy.blogspot...-reserves.html
The official site does not publish reports of Academy and U-18 games, except for FA Youth Cup games, to keep the pressure off the young lads and also to keep scouts from finding out about some of the young talent.
Theres a young lad called Seamus Kelleher at West Brom.He's from Norwich,but I know his dad,who is from Dublin.
Considered very promising.........lets wait and see.Anyway not sure if many of you will have heard off him.
a midfielder apparently.
http://www.westbrom.com/0/squad/academylist.html
Yes.. But is Seamus an Irishman or an Englishman with Irish name.
Sheffield United are poised to make a £400,000 bid for Wolves winger Mark Kennedy according to one website
He's from Norwich but i've seen him down the pub on Sundays with his dad and he's always wearing an Ireland jersey!He doesn't drink or smoke and he takes his game very seriously,unlike alot of the other young players.He's also quietly going about his business,and Robbo has told his dad,he could have a very good future in the game..........Lets wait and see!
He's very shy.Makes Duffer seem like Diego Maradonna!
Adam Rooney article from the Sunday Times...
Ireland: The Irish Rooney
PAUL ROWAN
Stanley Matthews was the youngest Stoke City player to hit a hat-trick till last Sunday. Now, it’s a teenage Dubliner
What do you do when you score your first hat-trick in the Coca-Cola Championship at the age of 18 years and nine days? Last Sunday Adam Rooney hadn’t rehearsed the moment. He had nothing written on the vest underneath his Stoke City shirt. He wasn’t even wearing a vest. For the first time in the game against Brighton at the Withdean stadium on the Sussex coast, he was seized by indecision.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, “whether to run over to our fans or get the ball and just keep it. I went to get the ball and the referee told me to put it down or he would book me. Apparently it’s a new ruling. If you take the ball out of the goal after scoring you get booked. It’s to cut down on the fights.”
Rooney and the Brighton goalkeeper, Wayne Henderson, both played for Cherry Orchard and the pair had been reunited earlier this year at the Eircom player of the year awards in Dublin. Rooney had mentioned the Brighton fixture at the end of the season and how he was hoping he might get a look-in.
“We said hello before the game and during the game he said to me, ‘Are you having a laugh?’ I wasn’t really talking to him after the game as I had to catch a flight.”
Rooney had important business back in Dublin; attendance at his grandmother’s 70th birthday party. The fuss over his hat-trick — irresistible to the tabloids on the same weekend that injury to his more famous namesake blighted England’s World Cup hopes — he left behind. He did have the ball, signed by all the players, tucked under his arm to remind him of his achievement. Reunited with his friends and his older brother on Monday, a kickabout was suggested in the back garden of his home in Palmerstown and the hat-trick ball came out when no other could be found.
Afterwards he put it in a box and made a mental note to have it framed. Not until Rooney returned to Stoke on Tuesday did the full impact of his achievement became apparent. At Stoke’s end-of-season dinner he was seated dutifully at a table with black-tie guests, listening to the compere for the evening, the former Ireland international Terry Conroy. The Stoke physiotherapist Ed Silk grabbed a word.
“Do you know who’s the second youngest scorer of a hat-trick for the club?” Silk asked.
“Me?” ventured Rooney.
“No,” Silk replied. “Stanley Matthews. He was the youngest till Sunday.”
ON WEDNESDAY afternoon, Rooney sits in the Holiday Inn on Sir Stanley Matthews Way, sipping from a plastic water bottle, and identifies what he considers the single most important factor in his sudden leap from obscurity: skipping fourth year at Palmerstown Community College in west Dublin.
He had wanted to be a professional footballer for as long back as he could remember but at the same time he needed no convincing of the importance of completing his Leaving Certificate. At Home Farm, Cherry Orchard and Crumlin United he had seen players leave for England with such high hopes and return a couple of years later with nothing. He asked one thing of his parents and his school; that he be allowed to skip fourth year — essentially a gap year — and do his Leaving Cert a year early.
Rooney wasn’t getting ahead of himself. Blessed with a phenomenal memory that kept his studies to a minimum, he is also by nature a big lad and had started a weights programme before most of his contemporaries, which usually let him boss the opposing centre-half in the Dublin and District Schoolboys’ League. Scouts are part of the furniture at Crumlin, which had yielded up the likes of Robbie Keane and established itself as the top schoolboy team in south Dublin. There was no question of Rooney having to write to an English club for a trial.
Two years ago he presented himself on the circuit and started doing the rounds. On the advice of an Ireland underage coach, he also secured the services of a London-based agent, John Moncur. Bolton Wanderers was the first stop, then Plymouth, West Ham and Nottingham Forest. He applied for a football scholarship with UCD and went for a couple of trials there but was rejected. Reading were also interested, then opted to take Kevin Doyle and Shane Long instead. In his Leaving Cert year Rooney missed many lessons, either going for trials or playing for the Irish schoolboys, but his teachers were understanding.
Perhaps they shouldn’t always have been. West Ham, for instance, he remembers as “a nightmare”. On his arrival he trained with the youth team. They left for a tournament in China the next day and he was put in with the reserves. They had a match coming up and weren’t training. When the match was over, the coach decided to give them a day off and Rooney flew back to Dublin, unseen and unwanted.
Trials were then arranged at Stoke and Sunderland, though he never went beyond the Potteries. “I stopped it at Stoke, decided that this was the place I wanted to be. There were a few Irish lads here. On trials at other clubs you can be a bit of an outcast. Nobody knows you or makes an effort to get to know you. You finish training at two in the afternoon, go to your digs and that’s it for the day. Here the lads were very genuine and made me feel at home.”
Last summer came synchronicity. Stoke offered him a two-year scholarship and then his Leaving Cert results arrived. Four-hundred-and-twenty-five points, the highest in his year. With that in his back pocket, he was ready to play ball.
“From day one he impressed me with his attitude,” the head of the Stoke academy, Noel Blake, says. “Adam is one of those boys, if you ask him to run 60 yards he’ll run 100 yards. When he got promoted to the first team, he was still the first at the door in the morning doing his chores, pumping up the footballs and stuff like that.
“In terms of his ability, he can play anywhere along the front line, wide or as the hold-up man, a bit like Wayne Rooney. But I see him primarily as a second striker, playing off somebody else, long term. His first touch is very good and he’s a finisher.”
Just as his school had done, Stoke quickly discovered they had taken on a player with his own way of doing things. Most of the scholarship players from outside the area live in digs and are transported to and from the ground. Not Rooney.
He moved over with his parents and they rented an apartment together on the edge of the city. The parents, property developers in Dublin, fly to and from Manchester on Aer Lingus, sometimes overlapping for a few days, sometimes crossing each other in mid-air. Rooney secured his full driving licence earlier this year and buzzes about in a VW Golf, to training or to collect his parents from the airport. It’s an arrangement that few families could make and others might reject but for the Rooneys it’s possible — they have only two sons — and it has worked well so far.
“It really does stop you getting homesick,” Rooney says. “Also at the beginning I was able to go back to Dublin a lot but now I can spend longer spells over here and I’m fine.”
He was promoted to the senior squad around Christmas, when Stoke were in a bad patch. With no money to spend in the January transfer window, Stoke manager Johan Boskamp turned to the academy. Blake, also a first-team coach, noticed Rooney was snatching at the ball and called him in for a chat. On his fifth appearance as a substitute he scored in Stoke’s 3-1 defeat at Reading, which put him in the starting line-up for his heroics at Brighton.
“There’s no question of the exposure going to his head,” Blake says, “he’s a completely down-to-earth young man, the type of guy you’d be proud to call your son.”
All week he enjoyed his name being attached to that of Wayne Rooney as a harmless piece of amusement, though in the hype other events in his career have become somewhat twisted. Steve Staunton was widely reported to have pulled him aside for a chat after he scored for Ireland Under-19s against Hungary in Arklow last month. The truth is more prosaic. “There was a bit of a mix-up over that. Steve Staunton spoke to the team before the game but he never said anything to me personally. He was just saying it’s a great honour to play for your country, go and enjoy it and give it your best.”
Rooney will have a chance to impress Staunton again when he plays in the Under-19 Uefa Championships in Slovakia in two weeks’ time. He will also join his old classmates when they unwind on a holiday in Spain after finishing their Leaving Certificate. Mostly, though, he’ll be putting his feet up, resting for next season.
He won’t need anybody to help keep his feet on the ground. As he knows, one swallow does not make a summer. But three is a pretty good sign.
i spose we should add terry dixon to the list now!
According the Manchester Evening News, Karl Bermingham will be released by Man City.
Read more here: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co....wield_axe.html
Among those who will be told to find new clubs are expected to be senior professionals Geert De Vlieger, David Sommeil and Mikkel Bischoff, and former youth team products Paul Collins, Ian Bennett and Karl Bermingham.
Rooney's hatrick is here:
http://s65.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...X25QRD87G0ESDS
You need this codec to view the video:
http://www.on2.com/cms-data/download...al_edition.exe
The first clip on this video shows how comfortable McGeady is on either foot:
http://media.putfile.com/Dons-2-2-Celts-Goals
2 cracking shots. How he can catch a volley so sweetly with his left (it looks like it was on target until blocked) and then turn and hit the bar with his right is amazing. A goal came from it in the end.
Rooney sounds impressive but jaysis, those Brighton defenders should be strung up, shocking defending!
Anyone hear how Richard Sadlier did on his comeback trial ?
Wes Hoolahan looks to be on his way out of Livinston after a spat with manager John Robertson.
"Robertson had a spat with Wes Hoolahan when the Irishman showed disgust at being taken off by storming up the tunnel.
The Livi boss responded by gesturing that his player was acting like a baby."
Portsmouth are lining up a summer move for Swansea striker Lee Trundle according to one website
Norwich are the favourites to sign West Ham defender Clive Clarke according to a web report...
leicester have turned down an approach for Conrad Logan
City 'no' to move for Logan
Leicester City have turned down overtures from Boston to permanently sign young goalkeeper Conrad Logan, according to the Pilgrims.
Logan enjoyed two fruitful loan spells with the League Two side last season.
And the 20-year-old impressed manager Steve Evans enough for him to inquire about making the move permanent.
However, according to Evans, City have turned down the approach.
"He's young and highly rated at Leicester," said Evans, who has also inquired about taking Brighton keeper Michel Kuipers on a permanent deal after his loan spells at Boston last season.
"We gave him the chance to come almost from obscurity when we gave him his Football League debut at Lincoln and he was fantastic for us.
"Since then, we tried to convince Leicester to let him go.
"They wouldn't let that happen and, besides, it could be better for his career if he stays there.
"I'm not giving up hope on either but I wouldn't like to say anything will happen," he told the Boston Standard.
Logan signed a one-year contract towards the end of last season that will keep him at the Walkers Stadium until at least next summer.
Colgan, McPhail and Devaney all promoted with Barnsley.
Though Colgan let a shot "dribble over the line", though saved a penalty later in the shoot-out.
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