Good point, many of my friends from school went to Torquay along with Lee Sharpe. They were much better footballers - we beat his school team 19-0 and 0-11. That's what we were like. However, Sharpe worked hard, washed the kits, cleaned the boots. My mates wasted their talent. They play non league and Sunday league - even to this day. But look at where working hard got Sharpe. He wasn't that highly rated. (I still don't like him).

Red and Blue Army!

You will meet very bright people on building sites and some dumb ones at universities.

Not on scale but it happens.

Talent alone isn't going to guarantee success in any area, and the larger the pool and competition the harder it gets.

Luck, opportunity and hard work make up more of a percentage of success in life than most aren't that keen to ponder on. Putting in the hours and neglecting your leisure time to better yourself is no joke and most aren't willing to be hardcore on that.

However those realities can't make up for talent....if you aren't good enough no amount of striving is going to get you there.

For me Kevin Keegan is a good example.....he had the talent but his drive to be as good as he could be made him the player he became.

There would have been many 'Keegans' who turned out to be also rans.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I've no doubt that Within the fraction of human beings capable of being top-class professional footballers, hard work and dedication can make the difference between success and failure. At Palace alone we've seen plenty who had the ability, the opportunity, but not the attitude and ended up out of football altogether at 25, having played a handful of premier league/championship games as a teenager.

At the same time, almost every case of a once very good schoolboy footballer who swears he could have made it if not for women/beer/smoking/attitude problems is probably to be treated with scepticism, even if the guy propping up the bar and telling his story was actually really good once.

There are hundreds of thousands of really, very, seriously good young players up and down the land, but very few end up good enough no matter how hard they try. I watched Michael Antonio playing for Tooting and Mitcham in the Ryman League once. Antonio was still a kid really (albeit a big one) playing against tough, experienced men, but he instantly made all 21 other plays look like they were moving in slow motion. And I mean that literally; it was like an optical illusion.

Being talented enough to be a top-class pro isn't a super-power, but usually, they stand out amongst the general population, and even amongst the better players in the general population like a sore thumb.

The idea that X made it because he wanted it more, or his face fitted, or whatever is not likely to be true, in my experience.

I loved that World Championship where Ronnie didn't play for a year then rocked up and won it. Unbelievable, only he could have done that.

Red and Blue Army!

Do we know if any of the released academy members have found new football homes - or is it too early for that news?

I believe Sion Spence is currently on trial at Walsall, and Luke Dreher is currently on trial at Swindon. Fingers crossed for them.