Manchester United's Youth Academy Not Good Enough?

In the current Manchester United side, there is certainly a lack of home grown talent.

Excluding the experienced trio of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, and Ryan Giggs—who are all nearing the end of their illustrious careers—the only other products of their youth academy in the current squad are John O'Shea, Darren Fletcher, and Wes Brown.

Although they have been an integral part of Manchester United's squad for quite some time, none of them are first team regulars.

Manchester United have, for the foreseeable future, the financial power to buy the best players around. This is great.

But nothing is permanent, and the club should take the opportunity such prosperity allows to invest heavily in developing their academy.

United need to take a closer look at the training system implemented by Portuguese clubs, which have become the breeding ground for the likes of Ronaldo, Nani and Anderson.

They should arrange training camps in Portugal with a club like Sporting Lisbon, who have long been known to produce world class players. They could even develop something similar with clubs in Brazil and Argentina.

It might be expensive, but if it helps the youngsters develop it is surely worth it.

The flip side of not having enough emerging young talent is that we end up buying gifted youngsters from abroad—Rodrigo Possebon, Fabio and Rafael Silva are all exciting young players with a bright future, who have been signed recently.
 
Without doubt, there are still a few bright spots, despite the somewhat gloomy picture I have painted. Fraizer Campbell is just one, last season he scored 15 goals in 34 appearances for Hull City, and he was impressive in pre-season.

Hopefully he will get some opportunities to prove his mettle.

The Cristiano Ronaldo transfer saga highlights the fact that it can sometimes be very difficult, even for a club of Manchester United's calibre, to hold on to foreign players.

But this problem will not be faced if the club develop players to rise through the ranks, who have always dreamed of representing United.