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Who is the young lad training with Town’s first team?

by Terrier Spirit

It’s Matt Daly. He’s one of Town’s academy players but has been brought in to train with the first team despite being the tender age of 17. He’s an exciting prospect, and the fact he’s stepping up to train with our first team suggest the coaching team at Town think a lot of him.

But who is he? I’ve scratched around the internet to find out a few bits and pieces about him.

Who is Matt Daly?

Matt Daly is an England under-17s international and plays regularly for Town’s youth teams. He arrived from Everton’s youth system a few years ago and is one of our most promising youth players. He plays as an attacking winger/inside forward kind of role.

He comes from Stockport, signed for Oldham’s youth team when he was eight, and then went to Everton after a couple of seasons. He was named Everton’s under-13 player of the season in 2014, and was presented his award by then manager, Roberto Martinez.

He moved across the Pennines to play under-15 football for Town, and has progressed through the age groups to play in the under-23s last season.

England under-17s glory

Matt Daly enjoyed his biggest moment in football just a few months ago, when he scored the winner for England under-17s against Israel with an assured finish that he swept into the bottom corner. You can see the goal in the embedded tweet below.

He went on to play every game for England in the Under-17 European cup, before England were knocked out on penalties by the Netherlands (despite Daly scoring his penalty).

What next for Matt Daly?

Sir Matt Busby famously said, “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough.” so Daly’s youth won’t count against him if he can prove he’s operating at the same standard as the first-teamers he’s training with this pre-season.

However, Alan Hanson said “You win nothing with kids”, so it may be that he isn’t deemed ready for the cut and thrust of the Premier League. (Though Hanson was proved wrong when the young Manchester United team he was talking about went on to win nearly everything in club football.)

A more likely stepping stone for Daly would be to go out on loan and get used to playing first-team football in the lower leagues. It would make sense for him to go to a team with footballing ambitions in League One or Two. That way he’ll not have his skill and creativity coached out of him, but will have to learn the physical side of the game.

Does the academy change mean we’ll see fewer youth prospects make the first team?

Last season Town downgraded their academy, scrapping all but the two oldest youth teams. So the under-15s team that Daly started in at Town no longer exists. I personally think it may have been a smart move from Town, as the best players from our youth teams were getting snapped up by the nearby footballing giants, like Man City and Liverpool.

It’s also worth remembering that the academy wasn’t producing a great deal of first-team players that had been at the club all through their childhood. Most players that have broken through from the youth team have been acquired from other academies, like Tommy Smith and Phil Billing, who both joined Town fairly late, after playing in other clubs’ youth systems.

I’m not in the know about Town’s youth setup, but I get the feeling that we’ll still try to bring players through the youth teams and into the first team. It’s just we’ll not be developing young kids any more, we’ll pick up the players that drop out of the big clubs’ academies and give them another chance.

The big Premier League teams hoover up all the talented youngsters and stockpile them without much prospect of them ever seeing anything more than a few league cup appearances (at best). If our scouts can pick out these players that aren’t quite top-six standard but have potential to do well in the bottom half of the Premier League. This could be the formula that gets more young players through to the first team, without having to invest millions on players that either never make it or get tempted into another clubs academy before we can sign them on a professional contract.

You can see Matt training with the first team in this video from HTTV: