Fed Up Of Class of 92?

[colinowl]

Sat in the pub the other night we were discussing the class of 92 and how lucky Ferguson had been to inherit them. Our attention turned to whether any other league team had had a similar pool but either they hadnt trained on or they were managed out of existence. The only real equivalents we could come up with was the Chelsea side that Ray Wilkins captained at 18 with the likes of Langley, Britton etc all youngsters.

I remember Eddie Macreadie the manager leaving (I think to go to Norway) but I do not know why or why the team fell apart after promotion to the first division. Perhaps somebody else could enlighten us?

Has anyone else known a class of 92 that didn't make it and what was the reason

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Welcome to the board.

Liverpool had an FA Youth Cup side good enough to win it in 2006 and 2007, beating first Man City and then Man United in finals, but none of those players - with the exception of Jay Spearing - ever got more than a cursory run-out in the first team. Spearing's now at Bolton, Ryan Flynn's at Sheffield United, Stephen Darby went to Bradford and got to a League Cup Final with them, Jimmy Ryan's at Fleetwood, and that team's centre forward Craig Lindfield is now at FCUM. Some of the others are no longer even pros.

[Borracho]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

There were Fergie's Fledglings in the late 1980s of course. None of them really made it at the club apart from Lee Sharpe, who wasn't a youth team player in any case but a signing from Torquay.

It was a much harder time to come into the Man Utd team than the mid-1990s were for the Class of '92. Ferguson was still finding his feet, fighting for his job on a yearly basis, and the squad was piss-poor compared to 1995.

Lee Martin scored the winner in the 1990 FA Cup final. Ordinarily you would call that making it, but by mid-1991 he was totally out of first-team contention. And then he joined Celtic just as they were recovering from the Lou Macari debacle. His timing was awful.

Most of the others had their careers wrecked by injuries. Tony Gill was destroyed by a terrible injury against Forest. Deiniol Graham broke his arm in a reserve game and that was the end of him. Giuliano Maiorana got crocked too. Russell Beardsmore scored the third against Liverpool on New Year's Day 1989, but was basically too frail for top-level football.

And then there was Mark Robins.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Arsenal similarly won successive Youth Cups in 2000 and 2001, and their winning team was peppered with much more recognizable names - Rohan Ricketts, Jerome Thomas, Jermaine Pennant, Steve Sidwell, Jay Bothroyd, Jeremie Aliadiere. All of whom, I think, enjoyed careers largely in the Premier League, if not with Arsenal, unlike the Liverpool side of six years later.

[Third rate Leszno]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

I think I saw Deiniol Graham score his only goal for Carlisle during a brief loan spell.

Adam Hamill is another of the Liverpool youngsters who's gone on to have a reasonable career, albeit not in the top flight. He scored the best goal I've ever seen 'live' in a youth cup tie against Carlisle in 2006. Jack Hobbs was in that side too, as well as the late Miki Roque.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

The "Class of 92", of course, did go on - as a Youth Cup side - to lose the 1993 final to Leeds. They were all in it - both Nevilles, Beckham, Scholes, Savage, Gillespie, Thornley. They apparently got hammered by a Leeds team whose only recognizable name (to me) was Noel Whelan.

wiki link

[Ray de Galles]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Arsenal similarly won successive Youth Cups in 2000 and 2001, and their winning team was peppered with much more recognizable names - Rohan Ricketts, Jerome Thomas, Jermaine Pennant, Steve Sidwell, Jay Bothroyd, Jeremie Aliadiere. All of whom, I think, enjoyed careers largely in the Premier League, if not with Arsenal...

Bothroyd's career was largely in D2 with the occasional relatively unsuccessful short foray in to the top tier with QPR, Charlton & Blackburn as well as popping up at Perugia.

Rohan Ricketts barely played anywhere and certainly didn't really have a real PL career to speak of.

[johnr]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Welcome colinowl.

At West Ham about 10-15 years ago, we had a youth and scouting set up that was the envy of a few - Ferguson even tried to poach one of the staff that led it - that had Joe Cole, Glen Johnson, Carrick, Ferdinand, Lampard, Defoe amongst others, that all went up the swanee because of a relegation and bad management.

[ale]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

NUFC last won it in 1985 and many of the team had solid if unspectacular careers at the higest level...Kevin Scott Joe Allon Paul Stephenson as well as the likes of Gary Kelly Brian Tinnion & Ian Bogie...the exception obviously being Gascoigne...

[anton pulisov]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Ireland fiished third at the 1997 FIFA Youth World Cup. In 1998 they won the U-16 and U-18 European Competitions.

Good review of what happened to the players here.

[andrew7610]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Southampton's FA Youth Cup final-losing side of 2005 not only contained Bale, Walcott and Lallana, but also Leon Best, Nathan Dyer, and David McGoldrick and a few others who are still playing professionally.

I don't recognise any of the Ipswich side that this mob lost to, though, so I would be interested to hear from any Ipswich fans as to how strong a side they had back then and what happened to them.

[SouthdownRebel]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

If his performances on loan at Brighton last season are anything to go by, Leon Best hasn't played professionally for quite some time

[Various Artist]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Green Calx wrote: [...] Lee Martin scored the winner in the 1990 FA Cup final. Ordinarily you would call that making it, but by mid-1991 he was totally out of first-team contention. And then he joined Celtic just as they were recovering from the Lou Macari debacle. His timing was awful. [...] And then there was Mark Robins.

Blimey, Lee Martin – I'd completely forgotten about his existence. Yes, he didn't even reach a proper Lee Sharpe 'next big thing' moment before his shooting star burned out.

Doesn't Giggs count as a "Fergie Fledgling"? I'm always puzzled by his lumping-in with the "Class of '92" seeing how he'd established himself as a first-team regular at 17 in 1991 – by the time Beckham, Butt, Scholes and the Nevilles were breaking through in the following few years he seemed like a virtual elder statesman already.

Was going to mention Robins as a Fledgling, so to speak. Curious about your tacking him on at the end like that GC – was the implication that he was barely worth mentioning in the same breath as the others? As a Norwich fan, I remember him with exceeding fondness as he did very well for us: most notably, of course, his turning around a 0-2 deficit into a 4-2 win at Highbury in his debut straight after signing from Man United, on the first day of the Premier League, was what kickstarted Norwich's remarkable run to the highest points of the club's history in that next year and a bit.

At the risk of derailing Colin's maiden thread further, the FA Youth Cup winners discussion reminds me of something someone posted in the discussion after Norwich won it over Chelsea a couple of years back – which is that you'll almost never see a successful pool of youth players graduate en masse to first-team football, certainly not all together at the selfsame club, as what generally wins them the cup is their cohesion as a team, and obviously you can't just pick the lot up and dump them in the first XI just like that. What a club really wants is one or two stand-out junior stars who can be integrated into the first-team with (hopefully) relative smoothness, over a whole batch of good but not brilliant youngsters. That NCFC youth side under Neil Adams had a bunch of fine players, for instance, but it's probably only the twin attackers Josh & Jacob Murphy who have a solid chance of making it, whether at the Canaries or elsewhere – the former is presently on loan at MK, the latter having a successful loan season at Coventry.
The so-called Class of '92, in other words, were a once-in-a-lifetime freak gathering of top-class talent (and Nicky Butt, boom boom) unlikely to be repeated. Particularly since the post-'92 era has been a period in which the opportunities for homegrown talent to make it (in the Premier League especially) have been dramatically eroded. So our forgetting almost every other pool of players who have at one point existed at the same stage of their footballing careers is very much the norm.

[Borracho]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Doesn't Giggs count as a "Fergie Fledgling"? I'm always puzzled by his lumping-in with the "Class of '92" seeing how he'd established himself as a first-team regular at 17 in 1991 – by the time Beckham, Butt, Scholes and the Nevilles were breaking through in the following few years he seemed like a virtual elder statesman already.

Giggs made one or two appearances near the end of 1990-91. But not until 1991-92 did he become a first team regular in earnest, i.e. three or four years after the likes of Beardsmore and Tony Gill. So there is enough of a gap there for him to be considered part of a different wave IMHO.

Was going to mention Robins as a Fledgling, so to speak. Curious about your tacking him on at the end like that GC – was the implication that he was barely worth mentioning in the same breath as the others?

No, it's just that everyone knows about him anyway, what with scoring the goal that saved Alex Ferguson's career etc. Also, I was in a hurry earlier.

[Bored Of Education]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Welcome to the board.

Liverpool had an FA Youth Cup side good enough to win it in 2006 and 2007, beating first Man City and then Man United in finals, but none of those players - with the exception of Jay Spearing - ever got more than a cursory run-out in the first team. Spearing's now at Bolton, Ryan Flynn's at Sheffield United, Stephen Darby went to Bradford and got to a League Cup Final with them, Jimmy Ryan's at Fleetwood, and that team's centre forward Craig Lindfield is now at FCUM. Some of the others are no longer even pros.

Funnily enough, I was at Anfield for the Liverpool/Man Utd first leg of the 2007 final and went back a year or two ago to see what had become of the team and was less than impressed with the results. The Man United team that actually won that night has Matty James now at Leicester and Welbeck and, erm, Danny Drinkwater as reasonably recognisable names.

[Sits]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

VH has reopened an old wound for me there. That Norwich Arsenal 4-2 marked my first ever weekend playing Fantasy League, and I'd gone large on the Arsenal defence with both Steve Bould and David Seaman. With only Ceefax for information, at half time I was sitting on +8 there (four for a clean sheet in those days), then I watched it gradually swing to -8 by the final whistle.

Apologies Colin for another diversion to your first thread. As you were.

[Jah Womble]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

(Wrong thread.)

[G-Man]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

I believe that Giggs played regularly with the youth team that included Scholes, Beckham, Butt, the Nevilles and, er, Robbie Savage.

Of these I know for certain that Giggs, Beckham and Scholes joined Man Utd as youth players during Ferguson's pontificate. So to say that Ferguson "inherited" them, as the OP puts it, is a bit of a distortion.

[JM Footzee]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Well, we could be looking at an example in the making at Chelsea.

FA Youth Cup (Under-18)
Winners: 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015
Finalists: 2013

UEFA Youth League (Under-19) winners: 2015

Under-21 Premier League winners: 2014

Premier Reserve League (no age restriction) winners: 2011

For the most part not bought in from overseas. But close to no way through to the first-team.

[1974ddr]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

Returning to the OP, what about Crystal Palace circa 1979/80 : Sansom, Fenwick, Nicholas, Hilaire et al. Promoted to Division 1 under Venables in 1979, hailed as the 'team of the eighties', and promptly relegated in 1981, most of their young players went on to fairly mediocre careers elsewhere- only Sansom was an unqualified success.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

I think a lot of the hype around that Palace side mirrored the media hype that has surrounded a lot of Venables' teams over the years.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Fed Up Of Class of 92?

The sadest demise of a team I saw was that of FC Nantes team of the early to mid 90s. They won the French League at a stylish canter in 1995, tearing a very expensive PSG side a new one at the Parc des Princes in the process.

The side contained, Karembeu, Pedros, Makelele, Loko, Ouedec, Eddy Capron, Christophe Pignol, and Keeper Dominiqur Casagrande, all 23 or under at the time.

The "old heads" in the team were Japhet N'Doram and Jean - Michel Ferri, both in their mid - 20s.

A beautiful side, and for 8 months or so, unstoppable. Then came the inevitable plundering, and you could say only Makelele and Karembeu went on to fulfill their true potential.

Loko, Ouedec, and Pedros were superb together as a front 3, but their careers more or less nosedived following their big money moves.