As Manchester City look back on their remarkable recent success at first-team level, they will hope that their academy can start bearing fruit over the next decade.
Seeing young players through to the first team - an unpredictable road at the best of times - has been made harder with every giant leap and record signing made at the Etihad, the club filling their first team squad with the best in the world and making more bets on the stars of tomorrow.
"The influx of players and money means clubs are able to buy the best players from all over the world," head of academy Jason Wilcox explained to MEN Sport in 2017.
"We've got the best player in Argentina, the best player from Spain, the best goalkeeper, the best full back - we're looking worldwide and getting the best player in that position at that moment in time.
"If you look at where City were when the boys [last] came through - Micah Richards for example had a fantastic career - the club now is completely different to where it was then.
"Man City then would be a club that we would now send one of our players on loan. It's a completely different picture now with the levels that we are aspiring too and the amount of top class players. The market has changed so we need to understand that."
That no academy player has regularly played first team football at City since the takeover in 2008 (or indeed since Richards broke through in 2005) is a glaring absence from the success story of the Sheikh Mansour ownership, and one that they have been desperate to address for some time.
Sustainability has been a key theme across a number of departments at the football club and producing homegrown talent remains a key target.
Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has set a number of ambitious targets for bringing players through but the reality means they have to had to be scaled down to hope rather than expectation.
It hasn't been for want of trying.
Pumping money into youth football has meant that they have long since departed the basic facilities at Platt Lane, moving in 2015 to a purpose-built state-of-the-art £200m training complex boasting a 7,000-capacity stadium that is the envy of many a club.
The building that hosts the young players (and women's team) mirrors that of the first team squad both internally and externally, and the main stadium can be seen over the bridge from the mini stadium. For the last four years, it has never been easier for a youngster to join first-team training at short notice or for the senior coaches to wander over and watch the academy sides.
There has also been a common philosophy imposed on every age-group, with British coaches taking influences from Barcelona's La Masia academy - where Pep Guardiola started his playing and coaching career - to drill players in numerous positions across a set system with the aim of making that step up to the senior side a little less gargantuan.
Numerous youngsters have been given a chance under each manager in the last decade.
Dedryck Boyata made his debut shortly after Roberto Mancini took charge, Manuel Pellegrini showed brief interest in Rony Lopes, Jose Pozo and Kelechi Iheanacho while Guardiola made Brahim Diaz one of the club's ten youngest debutants months after the manager arrived at the club.
Iheanacho, the club's record sale at £25m until this summer when Danilo moved to Juventus, is one of a number of youngsters sold on by City for significant profit in what has become a major benefit of the academy.
Just because a prospect is deemed not good enough to break into the Blues side does not mean they cannot have a career in the game and sales over the last few years have brought in £148m. That is a significant boost for the club and scouts flock to academy games because of the education that they know the young Blues coming through will have had.
Ultimately though, it has never been harder to break into a first team that has smashed all manner of records on their way to successive Premier League titles and that has brought some frustrating exits.
Only Phil Foden remains of the three youngsters that their chairman backed to make the step up two years ago and one of those departures, Jadon Sancho, has set an example for others to follow.
The 19-year-old, unlikely to return to the Etihad while Guardiola is coach given the manner of his exit, has blossomed in an excellent Dortmund side and shown what regular, competitive football can do for development.
He has now been involved with the England squad for more than a year and Rabbi Matondo, Brahim Diaz, Jeremie Frimpong are among the cast that have since snatched opportunities elsewhere rather than run the gauntlet of breaking into the immense talent pool at the Etihad.
After things turned stale under Pellegrini, Guardiola was tasked on his arrival in 2016 to - in Al Mubarak's words - "find a lot of gems that we're going to produce". With his love for working with young players and bringing them through at Barcelona and Bayern Munich also referenced, part of his remit at City has been to follow suit in Manchester.
City's coach, though, has never been one to play youngsters for the sake of it regardless of the PR consequences.
In February 2018 he fielded just six substitutes at Burnley, saying: "I could have called one of the second team, but we decided they were not going to play"; days after Tommy Doyle's debut last month, he laughed off the suggestion that he was under any kind of pressure to produce academy players - either local talents or otherwise - and declared that Foden was the only one currently good enough to challenge for the first team.
Can you be expected to win every competition you enter AND bring young talent through? Not in the manager's eyes. Having earned his coaching stripes with Barcelona B in the Spanish fourth division where the La Masia hopefuls had to overcome tough pitches, crowds and competitors, Guardiola has been deeply unimpressed by the youth competitions in English footballs and regularly called for situations "where they don't play in front of 10 or 12 people".
Regular changes inside the academy haven't helped either.
Wilcox is the third person to head up the academy in the last 10 years, with Mark Allen taking over from Jim Cassell in 2013 before leaving to become director of football at Rangers four years later. The club went through three Under-18s coaches in as many seasons as part of that change and former Barnsley caretaker coach Paul Harsley is the fifth man to take charge of the Elite Development Squad (EDS) in the last decade.
With Simon Davies becoming the latest to relinquish the head of academy coaching role when he left to form part of Vincent Kompany's backroom staff in summer, it once again leaves Wilcox with two big jobs.
While the academy sides have been one of the powerhouses in domestic competitions such as the FA Youth Cup - reaching four of the last five finals - and taking well to facing League One and Two sides in the EFL Trophy, the marquee European competition has proven tougher. The Under-19s have only made the semi-finals of the UEFA Youth League once in six attempts and look resigned to another disappointing group-stage exit this time.
Those results though, as well as turning a profit from academy transfers, pale in significance compared to the ultimate prize of bringing a young player through to the first team.
After having to play catch up to the astronomical progress made in the first team, there are promising shoots for the future. Even more encouraging is that many of the brightest prospects are local, homegrown talent that have been at the club through all of its transformation.
Foden is the main hope. Seen as one of the biggest talents for City and England for many a year for the way he can dictate the rhythm of a game, the cultured playmaker has been kept in the bosom of the first team squad for more than two years after immediately catching Guardiola's eye.
While it has been frustrating at times to have to wait for first-team action, there is both an acceptance that he is learning from some of the best players in the world as well as an immensely talented coaching staff and an awareness that pushing players too much too early can be detrimental for their long-term careers.
The 19-year-old already has two Premier League medals and looks more ready than ever to get minutes in all competitions. Game time with England Under-21s has been prioritised at a national level after his star turn at a summer tournament but Gareth Southgate is a known admirer.
If former Barcelona youth captain Eric Garcia is next in line to make the step up having barely put a step wrong in his two years and counting at the City Football Academy, there are also high hopes for Stockport youngster Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Knutsford's Tommy Doyle.
Central defender Harwood-Bellis, 17, took every opportunity last season with numerous injuries to more experienced players in the Under-18s and Under-23s, and caught Guardiola's eye in pre-season so much that he started alongside Garcia in the Carabao Cup game at Preston.
Doyle is a dream for the club, the grandson of not one but two City greats - Mike Doyle and Glyn Pardoe, who still holds the record of the youngest City debutant - who manages to combine tenacity and creativity in midfield. Just 18, Doyle epitomises the blend of character and talent needed to break through at the club and has embraced his rich Blue heritage rather than be daunted by it.
"I'm proud of everything that they've done because the history they've had at the club is a big thing. I'm proud of them and hopefully I can continue the Doyle legacy and keep it going," he told MEN Sport last year.
"This is the club that I love. I want to spend as long as I can here. Hopefully now when I come back I can do myself justice and try and push as much as you can for the first team. I've been at the club since I was four so it's been a long time but I've enjoyed every minute of it. As I get older I appreciate it more and more.
"It's never nice losing but when it's your team that you love it destroys you when you get beat. Just because I love the club so much you give that extra bit more and you want to fight with everything that you've got."
When Guardiola says farewell at the Etihad for one last time - his current contract runs out at the end of next season - the youth legacy he leaves behind will be one of the main aspects he is judged on. How many gems will have been not just unearthed but allowed to shine?
His star is certainly hitched to Foden's and, despite what he might say, you only have to listen to Doyle's tearful, proud granddad after the midfielder's debut and see how it resonated with the fanbase to understand that bringing through Blues matters more.
With Foden leading the charge and many others showing potential, there is more than a suggestion that the dream of the City hierarchy of a first XI and squad well-populated with homegrown academy graduates could yet become reality in the near-distant future, even if there remain significant hurdles in the way of all of them given the many factors that can block a path to success.
After spending the last decade trying to catch the academy up to first-team level, the challenge for the next decade will be to start showing the results of that every week at the Etihad.