Indeed - but at a lower level than us. Very few have even done much at Championship level (Field, Aziz). A lot seem to find themselves at League 1 or League 2 level, which seems to justify why we didn’t deem them good enough to play in a side flirting between the Premier League and promotion from the Championship.
I think if we take a look back at what's come from the academy in the current "career window", producing Championship quality players hasn't actually been that much of an issue. Our problem is more producing genuine premier league quality, we have very few at that level.
Currently you can point to Azaz, Forss, TGH, Field, Palmer, Rogers, Allsop, Ireogbunam, Sawyers, Roofe, O'Shea, Wood, Roberts, and Ferguson who have established careers in the top two levels of football, you could if you want throw in Berahino who did have the ability for a period to get into the England squad before his well publicised personal issues, plus Welsh international Matt Smith at a push. Of the current youngsters coming through in the game, we have Fellows now establishing himself in the team, Lino Sousa at 18 on Arsenal's bench, plus a fair few England youth internationals scattered amongst other clubs after their recent raids who will likely produce a couple more championship quality footballers.
It's why I believe we should be giving the likes of Fellows, Heard, Whitwell and Taylor a bit more game time here than we do, rather than find out when they leave that they were actually respectable options at this level.
