[RobsonLegend]

The last bumper crop of players that came through from the Academy was a pre-Bosman class. Ever since then, clubs everywhere are all looking for the quick fix: buying young talent to put a winning team on the field.

Whether we care to admit it or not, football fans (as most sports fans are) are an impatient lot, particularly the higher up the level of clubs you go. With all due respect, if I'm a Derby County fan, I'm not expecting too much from my team from season to season--respectability is good enough, and anything else is gravy.

But I'm a Manchester United fan. I expect consistent excellence. I don't necessarily expect trophies every season (if I did, I'd have become an Arsenal/Chelsea fanboy by now), but I do expect us to be in contention come the end of the season.

It would be a quite frustrating time for fans as the club would work on grooming and assimilating an Academy prospect into the first team squad. It won't be any worse than the 80s, though, when the team honestly struggled at times to live up to the expectations that come with the badge.

But again, footy fans are impatient--and fickle. Maybe it would be nice to have a barren spell, so that there'd be a good weeding of gloryhunting fans.

Anyway, back to point: we've become spoiled by our own success, and to me, that represents a large part of why we fail to see any youngsters make the same breakthrough that Beckham, Giggs, Neville, Butt, Brown, O'Shea etc. made.

There's also the whole thing about "keeping up with the Joneses," as we see other contenders swoop for young talents, fans of a club as big (and more importantly, as rich) as United have come to expect the same of United.

On a slight tangent, this is why I would actually be in favor of a return of the limit on foreign players. I doubt that'll happen anytime soon though.

With all that said, I think we could be looking at a couple of really promising guys coming up. Simpson has already shown us flashes of brilliance, and at his current level, what he needs is more playing time. I think I am one of the few who actually like Eagles as well. Everytime I've seen him in action, I've seen him make some really intelligent runs and some good passes, and again, with more playing time, could develop into a regular, or at least a dependable squad player.

Van Der Sar is not getting any younger, and I don't think Kuszczak is the long-term answer. We of course have Foster coming up, but Heaton has already been capped by England U-21, so he should be coming along soon as well.

funk, why can't there be a balance between growing talent from the academy and finding players from abroad? There CAN be that balance. It just requires tons of patience and realizing that we have to temper our usual optimism with a bit of pragmatism and stay encouraged for the long run.