Since my first year as Chairman in 2009, we have taken great pride in always doing things our own way. The need to find ways of being competitive is more pertinent than ever following the Club’s promotion to the Premier League. We must find ways of being competitive against our peers.
Training Ground Guru | Huddersfield to scrap all age groups below U18s
Quite interesting, going from a cat 2 to a cat 4. They mention it costs a million a year to run and that only 1 person has gone on to play in the Premier League from it....Jon Stead.
Madness that they are scrapping like that to save £1m a year when other teams in the Premier League will be paying more than that to kids who will never ever play for the first team.
Don't be so dramatic!Sums up everything that's wrong with football today if you ask me.
Don't be so dramatic!
IF, and that's in capitals intentionally, the English lower leagues became a breading ground of young, British talent who can get exposed to first team football at an earlier age, similar in mound to Deli Ali, then it could work. But that model would assume that the top teams stay at the top and the bottom lot remain as feeders.Why bother with an academy when you can pick up lower league academy players for peanuts. In the long term though the smaller clubs will decide the increasingly smaller fees they are getting with players being taken earlier and earlier aren't worth it and will close their academies, then what? Is the whole English setup going to rely on places like the Strachen Football Foundation?
Why? Surely they have a duty to the community?
Getting picked up by your local academy and receiving professional coaching is the goal of a lot for youngsters.
That's now been denied to those in the local area.
If it's only produced one first team player maybe they should look at the way they're running it rather than scrapping it.
Good job no one at City made a call like this, we'd have been in deep shit without our academy graduates.
You would think now they are in the Premier League that £1m would be a drop in the ocean for them now though?
Think the chairman made the point that because they are in an area where there are a fair number of category one academies then they find it hard attracting talent to their academy because the kids they want have better offers.
very much this.You would think now they are in the Premier League that £1m would be a drop in the ocean for them now though?
very much this.
We're told promotion to premiership is worth 170m without parachute payments and 290m if you stay up for one year.
Surely protecting your academy for the next 5 years is worth 5m of that money particularly if you're highly likely to go down again.
That said how many perpetual lower half premier league sides produce any academy players?
Think the chairman made the point that because they are in an area where there are a fair number of category one academies then they find it hard attracting talent to their academy because the kids they want have better offers.
Take out the 2 Manchester clubs aren't they now the only prem team in that region? I'd personally spend the money and bring the academy up to stratch, better facilities and coaches, and try to compete in the area between the big Manc clubs and the likes of the Sheffield clubs and Leeds.
Liverpool and Everton, who both have huge reaches in terms of academy scouting and pull, a lot of cov kids picked up by them even.
Then you still have derby who have a category one academy, while it's not super close, it still has massive resources, and then still Leeds, and Nottingham( also category one) as well.
Then you have a load of smaller teams, both Sheffield clubs as you say, but then Barnsley, Bradford, Preston, Doncaster. All within a reasonable distance for nicking talent. It's a massive fight for players.
But then again I can see your point as The Coventry academy has the same problem, we have to compete, with Wolves, Villa, Birmingham, West Brom, derby and Nottingham forest. As well as all the big boys.
Coventry had a situation a couple years back, where they hired an academy coach who had left villa, he came here, for a couple months, one day didn't turn up to work, had been sent by Villa, to scout out academy players, and ended up taking I think it was 5 kids with him to Villa's acadmey.
It's a brutal environment.
Leeds and Forest are Category 2
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?