The reserves is a start. Most teams play their youngsters in the reserves nowadays so our reserves doing well hints at the academy getting better. Villa often win the reserves league and it's no surprise that they produce so many players.
It's hard to tell how the academy is progressing as our youngsters are only just maturing into players now but I think this is a big year for them. A few of our players turn 20 in the next few months and will no longer be teenagers which can change your opinion about how young they really are. Players like Paul Downing, Romaine Sawyers, Lateef Elford Alliyu, Sam Mantom and Kayledon Brown all really have to get close to the first team or go out on loan this season like fellow age group players James Hurst and Chris Wood and impress if they are going to have a career here. To put that into perspective, Joe Mattock only a few months ago turned 21 and most had written him off a year ago.
Hopefully the players in the next age bracket like Thorne, Berahino, O Neil and Roofe also get close to the first team or a loan as they will be 19 before the season finishes and your only a youngster for so long.
We are making progress as a large number of the kids we release around that age now will have a football league career which is better than we were doing even 6 or so years ago but you just want things to speed up a bit now, be that doing something in the academy leagues and FA youth cup, doing something in the reserves or breaking into our or somebody else's first team.