Come Saturday evening, a lot of talk amongst the Aston Villa faithful would have been about a certain academy product – Jacob Ramsey.
The 20-year-old produced a Man of the Match performance as Villa beat Newcastle 2-0 in the Premier League.
But before the Bodymoor Heath academy graduate could grace that Villa Park turf yesterday, he was already being outshone by two other teenagers just hours earlier.
Aston Villa’s U-18’s absolutely smoked Norwich City’s youngsters 10-0 in Premier League 2, with Dewain Sewell and Ajani Burchall netting hat-tricks.
It was easy work for the Villa youngsters, who have been ripping it up for a number of seasons now.
In another summer of change for Villa’s youth, where some of the best talents in the country landed on their doorstep, Burchall, a quick-footed winger, was one of the names who they snapped up from Bournemouth.
And whilst these youngsters still have a long path to Dean Smith’s first team, as they can see from Ramsey’s rise, they know that there is a pathway there – and a realistic one.
These last ten years have been pretty abysmal for Villa supporters, including suffering relegation to England’s second-tier for the first time in nearly three decades.
But during that period of mis-management and chaos, they produced one of their finest talents in Jack Grealish.
If a player of that ilk can be nurtured during such a troubling period, imagine what Villa can produce when things are running like clockwork?
Well, Villa’s youngsters won the FA Youth Cup last season and it seems as though they are going full-steam ahead once again.
Villa supporters are utterly delighted at what they are seeing and how their academy is shaping up because it is now being run in a proper manner.
This is how they reacted to their thumping 10-0 win against Norwich’s U-18’s yesterday:
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