Youth to be served at Man City as Kelechi Iheanacho and others are in FA Cup spotlight

Richard Jolly writes that whether it be Brandon Barker, Bersant Clina, Manu Garcia or another – it's to see if considerable investment in the City Football Academy is producing.

Manchester City's Kelechi Iheanacho shown during a Premier League match against Crystal Palace in September. Mike Hewitt / Getty Images / September 12, 2015

For Manchester City's next generation, Chelsea are the yardstick. For their future, they are the enemies who they don't want to emulate. They are right and wrong role models.

The last time that Brandon Barker, Bersant Celina, Manu Garcia and Kelechi Iheanacho were pitched into an FA Cup tie against the Londoners, it was in the FA Youth Cup. Now it may be in the senior side Sunday.

Chelsea beat City 5-2 on aggregate in last season’s final. They are turning the junior competition into their private fiefdom and have won it four times in the last six seasons. Yet talented teenagers do not graduate to the first team at Stamford Bridge.

City have faced similar questions about what happens to their prospects. They, too, can afford to import expensive talents and have a requirement for short-term success which can get in the way of long-term objectives. They have been accused of erecting a roadblock preventing prospects from graduating to the first 11.

Read more: Richard Jolly on confusion evident in Manchester United minds after the mess against Midtjylland

Also see: Chelsea's Eden Hazard has a chance for redemption against a likely weakened Man City in the FA Cup

Yet City’s journeys have created an opportunity. A route into the team has opened up, not in the way Manuel Pellegrini had hoped and rather quicker than many envisaged. As City begin the first of four games in as many competitions on the road in 10 days, a crowded fixture list and a considerable injury list affords chances. “We have just 13 fit [senior outfield] players,” Pellegrini said. “We must prioritise the other competitions.”

Enter the kids. Barker, Celina, Garcia and his namesake Aleix have never started a first-team game for City. The probability is that will change Sunday for at least some of them. Pellegrini was unhappy at today’s scheduling of this tie and its proximity to Wednesday’s Champions League clash with Dynamo Kiev. He is short of midfielders, with Fabian Delph, Kevin De Bruyne, Samir Nasri and Jesus Navas all sidelined.

Teenagers could be catapulted into the tie of the round. It will rank as no surprise that Iheanacho is. The forward is a comparative veteran of six starts. That his City career already incorporates nine goals is a sign of his promise. The latest, a rasping shot that brought City level against Tottenham last week, can be taken as a sign of an aptitude for the major occasion. Pellegrini has come to appreciate the Nigerian whereas he remains to be convinced by the other newcomers.

“They try to get the trust to the manager,” he said. So far, Barker, Celina and Manu Garcia have all figured as substitutes. The central midfielder Manu Garcia opened his City account in the 5-1 League Cup win over Crystal Palace. The winger Celina provided the assist for Sergio Aguero’s consolation goal against Leicester City. The shortage of natural wide players could also benefit Aleix Garcia, a summer recruit from Villarreal, and Barker, a Mancunian with a crisp shot.

They have defensive contemporaries. Left-back Angelino and right-back Pablo Maffeo and centre-backs Cameron Humphries-Grant and Tosin Adarabioyo could come into contention. “They must take the chance in the correct way to show why they are so near to the first team,” Pellegrini said.

Each is proof that investment has been allied with ambition. The £200 million (Dh1.05 billion) City Football Academy was designed to produce players. City have the facilities but, as the Chelsea counterparts can testify, that does not guarantee a future.

They will not all make it. The truth is that generations like Manchester United’s Class of ’92, where six progressed to become first-team regulars who would make almost 3,500 appearances, are extreme exceptions. If a major club can unearth two genuine first-teamers in the academy, they have done well. In their mid-table days, City drew rather more of their team from their youth system. That process was interrupted when standards were raised.

Now an old aim has been resurrected. This, in the most demanding of environments, is a first real chance to see if City’s kids have the quality and mentality required.

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