After watching Arsenal youngsters crush almost everyone in their path (including us) with their unbelievable array of youth players, I have started to wonder why our crop of young guns seem to fade into obscurity as soon as they leave the safety of the U18s and enter the big bad world of professional football.

Over the years nearly every team in the top flight have had at least one gem of a player, one youngster who they had spent a decade developing who could either drastically improve their team, or if they were that good, could be sold for a substantial fee of money.

The ability to churn out top-class talent year after year speaks volumes for how good the behind the scenes set-up at a club is. Let’s not forget that Steven Gerrard was once a raw eager school kid, he had to be moulded into one of the world’s greatest midfielders and this skill comes from the coaches and staff at the club. Yes sometimes you can get lucky and stumble across a treasure chest of gold but most clubs appear consistent in their scouting methods.

And don’t buy into the old saying of the big clubs get all the good young players, nowadays teams tend to have a specific geographical area from where they can recruit youngsters therefore there is no excuse. Southampton managed to produce Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott without too many problems so why can’t Sunderland do this?

Manchester United had the famous crop of Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Butt, Brown and the Neville twins. West Ham brought Lampard, Ferdinand, Cole and Carrick to the football world, Everton invented Wayne Rooney and even though I hate to say it Newcastle have fallen on their feet with Steven Taylor and Boro aren’t doing too bad with Stewart Downing in their side. Just in case you think that’s just a fluke Aston Villa made Gareth Barry an England star while Liverpool were busy perfecting Owen, Carragher and Gerrard. So who have Sunderland produced?

Michael Bridges, Martin Smith, Paul Thirlwell, Darren Holloway, Michael Proctor, Grant Leadbitter and Chris Brown to name a few. Ok Leadbitter seems to be an exception and I suppose we made some money off Mickey Bridges but they still don’t exactly set the world alight do they? I mean seriously the majority of players we have produced are average or below with most being farmed out to lower league clubs to earn a living making a mockery of our youth system.

I don’t take pleasure out of criticising the club I love but Sunderland’s ineptitude to establish a successful youth system is severely damaging the progress of the club. Keane seems to have made positive changes by bringing in his own scout and backroom staff and in some respects this has worked with Michael Kay figuring heavily in the pre-season tour of Ireland, not to mention a place on the subs bench at Old Trafford. However we need to start producing Premier League players in order to properly compete in the Premier League.

Yes I realise it takes time to develop youngsters and nothing in football is a quick fix, but I just think the problem needs to be raised and acknowledged before we fall even further behind. We have all of the facilities so it’s about time we reaped the rewards for this, don’t you think?