Mmhmm. I wonder how much the departure of McDermott as head of the academy has to do with it, though - towards the end of his tenure here, it seemed almost our MO to avoid signing talented youngsters, in favour of developing our own locally-based players. Of course, with exceptions like Parrott and Shilow Tracey, but we seemed to have a lower proportion of buys/poached youngsters in our youth teams than our rivals did/do.
Could just be Levy cheaping out again, but I don't think so - he was okay with speculative punts like Iago Falque and Souleymane Coulibaly back in the day. My gut feeling is that it was more of a preference than anything else.
Which is fine, but with Winks, Skipp, Harvey White, Amos....we seem to be producing a lot of players who fit the mould of 'small/wiry, tenacious, neat, central midfielder'. Maybe expanding our network and picking up talented youth players will diversify our output.