THE football food chain can be frustrating for fans. While they will commend their own clubs for picking up talent from clubs further down the ladder, supporters will often be angered by bigger fish circling their own ‘starlets’, to use a term beloved of this profession.
This has become especially true in recent years it seems, as a variety of factors have led to clubs looking to secure promising players at ever younger ages. What has heightened the frustration of fans though from top to bottom is that very often, they don’t even get to see the brightest prospects from their academies pull on the jersey at first-team level before a bigger club has lured them away.
