CHRIS LAKEY Glenn Roeder will tell Norwich City's youth coaches to follow the Arsenal model to emulate the achievements of the club's nearest rivals, Ipswich Town.

CHRIS LAKEY

Glenn Roeder will tell Norwich City's youth coaches to follow the Arsenal model to emulate the achievements of the club's nearest rivals, Ipswich Town.

The new Canaries boss has one short-term aim - to hoist City out of the Championship drop zone - but he already has one eye on the future.

Norwich's geographical position means it is unable to compete with the inner city clubs - and that will mean casting the net into Europe for stars of the future, just as Arsene Wenger does at Arsenal.

Wenger has a reputation for transforming his young recruits into top-flight players - the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Robin Van Persie, Emmanuel Eboue and Kolo Toure are testament to his scouting team's abilities.

Roeder wants to see the same happening at Carrow Road.

“He has a fantastic academy for boys in the London area, but if you think about it the majority of those young players have come from abroad, they have come from France, have come from Africa, have come from Switzerland, have come from anywhere he can find them,” Roeder said.

“It is amazing how he keeps turning up such quality. You must be at your strongest in your own back yard, which is local to us, and I am sure we are, but I think we also have to be a bit more pro-active and look for one or two young talents form further afield.”

Roeder's coaching CV includes two years as head of the youth set-up at West Ham, where he helped produce a string of young talent, including Joe Cole, and learned the value of a catchment area full of budding young talent on his doorstep.

“I know the traditions at West Ham and the way they produce young players,” he said. “They are very fortunate to be in a part of east London where there is an amazing amount of young talent, in east and south London - they are in a great catchment area.

“It's much more difficult for us up here in Norwich in terms of the choice of players and the numbers of young players to choose from.

“But as Ipswich proved a few years ago, there isn't anything that is impossible. Everything is possible because they won the FA Youth Cup (in 2005) and produced some very good young players and that should make our Academy staff jealous - that Ipswich have done it and we haven't yet. So that should make them even more determined going out to look for the best local talent.

“But hopefully we will be in a position if we need to, to draw on some talent from farther afield and basically that's what Arsene does so well.”

Roeder is said to be highly-regarded by Wenger and was linked with a role under the Frenchman during the summer, but said it hadn't got past the rumour stage, even though the Arsenal boss confirmed that “he would feature in a list of candidates”.

“It would probably be wrong of me to talk too deeply about that, but I think Arsene is looking to develop even more what I consider is the best recruitment policy in the world,” Roeder said.