Letting my fledglings go... :(

I'm playing my 17th season and 13th with Tottenham. I'm a United fan but my application was rejected after Sir Alex retired. However, Harry had retired the same season and Spurs offered me a job. The rest, as they say, is history with the new Spurs stadium named after me

I've always followed Sir Alex's policy of bringing through the youth. My squad average age has rarely crossed 23, and I rarely buy big names preferring to bring through players from the academy.

I've always found it easy letting go of players who are over 30 but in the recent seasons I've been faced with a tough issue. Some of my fledglings, who began their careers with me are now into their 30s and are finding that they cannot get into my team easily. Some have started requesting to move to other clubs for more first team action. Also, many are increasingly starting to look out for new challenges because they feel they've achieved everything here.

I want to have the likes of Scholes, Giggs and Neville at the club but I'm finding it very difficult. Any of you face the same issues?

Unfortunately for me being at smaller club(Banik Ostrava), my chairman often decides to sell decent youth

But i've got about 5 youth in the first team at the minute, from 19 up to 29 who i can see staying on for a while unless my chairman decides to let them go.

I have had one youth stay with me from the start(bar a few loans) and is now a coach at the club, i can't quite believe that he isnt even in favoured personnel though even though he played over 400 games and scored 99 goals for the club. He probably would have played a lot more though, but like you said, they struggle to get into the squad when you get new players in.

There was 2 others who were already here when i joined, who then retired and i made them coaches too, one had been at the club for 35 years now