Bristol City ranked No1 in Premier League and Championship for developing talent in 2023/24

Bristol City’s prolific academy has been further highlighted by the fact that no club in England’s top two leagues have afforded a higher proportion of minutes to “club-trained players” in 2023/24 than the Robins.

A study by the CIES Football Observatory has revealed City are No1 among their Championship rivals and the 20 clubs that make up the Premier League with seven such individuals having played league minutes this term, accounting for 33.7 per cent of the total minutes played across the entire squad.

That ratio puts the Robins out in front among the best 44 clubs in England with Blackburn Rovers second on 30.6 per cent - having played eight players from their system - and Saturday’s opponents Middlesbrough in third with 29.7 per cent. The highest-placed Premier League club are Arsenal on 22.1 per cent, with three top-flight sides having not fielded a single club-trained individual - West Ham, Brentford and Luton Town.

CIES denote club-trained as being: “those who spent at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 years in their club of employment (seasons of their 15th and 21st birthdays included).”

From a City perspective, that covers Max O’Leary, Zak Vyner, Cam Pring, Sam Bell, Tommy Conway, Joseph James and Jamie Knight-Lebel. Ephraim Yeboah has presumably been excluded because he’s only been with City for less than two years. The forward's 184 minutes off the bench would only boost City's total further.

It’s another feather in the cap for the Robins academy which has proved a vital resource in the post-pandemic seasons as former manager Nigel Pearson regularly had to lean on the youth set-up to supplement his squad.

Indeed, during the 60-year-old’s time at Ashton Gate, from February 2021 through to the start of this month, he handed debuts to 14 club-trained players with Conway and Pring now established first-team starters, while Alex Scott has been sold for a club record transfer fee.

It could prove his greatest legacy in the West Country as new head coach Liam Manning, whose background is in youth development, will now be looking to continue the process and in his early interviews has reiterated that when it comes to recruitment, he will always look to the academy first.

The flipside of all this, of course, is the argument that City have been too dependent on their academy and that lack of experience coupled with minimal work in the transfer market has held them back to a degree.

On a global scale, City rank 86th of 60 leagues assessed with Ukraine’s Dynamo Kyiv in first on 82.9 per cent, FK Minsk of Belarus second on 71.5 per cent and La Liga side Athletic Club third on 68.9 per cent.