This article originally appeared in the Royals matchday programme on 5th May 2007.

It's been a fantastic season for our youth teams. The under 18s have been exceptional and a real credit to themselves and this football club.

The pleasing aspect about this year is that we developed a winning team and then dismantled it early on, to give other players opportunities, before continuing to dismantle it - and yet the team's winning mentality remained.

Losing out on the title by the narrowest of margins to Leicester was disappointing, but beating them last week was the icing on the cake at the end of a very successful campaign.

Leicester are a formidable outfit at youth level and they deserve a lot of credit - they've scored 93 goals in 28 games. But our visit on Saturday was the first time that they have not scored a goal all season. Big plaudits must go to Patrick Cox and young schoolboy Clovis Kamdjo, who played alongside each other in central defence last weekend and were absolutely superb.

At the start of the season we had Alex Pearce and Adam Bygrave at the back - the best centre-back pairing in the country at this level in my mind - and yet we finished the campaign with two younger players who performed just as admirably. That is really encouraging!

It's particularly edifying to observe Alex Pearce doing so well for Northampton on Friday night. Since he's been there, Town have been showing play-off form! The youth system is always a strange beast, because sometimes you can camouflage the reality. But I don't think we've done that this year and we've still achieved our goals.

We had a great Youth Cup run, performing spectacularly in two games and very diligently in one - against Liverpool at Anfield, where we weren't at our usual best and yet still felt we should have won. Deep down I knew whoever won that match would probably win the competition.

But if we'd won it, Alex Pearce wouldn't have played 15 professional games for Northampton - sometimes things are just meant to be.

This week, Geoff Warner, Nas Bashir and Steve Shorey and I reviewed the season and reflected very positively on the progress of the boys.

A big thanks to all of my staff for their hard work this season, not forgetting our Sports Scientist Ed Franklin and the ever reliable 'Whopper'.

Of course it is a tremendous boost for us to be involved with such a positive club as Reading right now - in fact it's a great responsibility to represent the Club in the manner which is expected to due to the phenomenal efforts of the first team.

What is required now is for players to take another step - from being good youth players to becoming established in the first team squad. And where we are lucky and have an added advantage over most other clubs (Manchester United excluded), is that if our players are good enough - and only time will tell - then at Reading the manager will give them their chance.

They are very lucky lads in that the first team staff always involve them in training and give each one endless help and encouragement.

We work tirelessly on trying to develop their talents and helping them achieve their goals, but ultimately it is down to them.

Undoubtedly this year, this crop of players has worked very hard. I very much hope they will continue to do that, and if they do, they may have a chance. But you never know these days!

With young kids there is so much hype and so many distractions, and you hope they are able to keep their feet on the floor and maintain their standards so that they can become successful players such as the grounded but extremely talented professionals we have in the first team here.