Home
We've been dealing with harsh realities for a good few years at Wanderers, and this week another message hit home.
After downgrading their academy from Category One status, the club have erased another legacy of the Premier League days.
In a move that could save £1million a year, fans are justifiably concerned that this could hamper the flow of young footballers coming through the system at a time when Wanderers have only just started to embrace them.
Reducing the investment, some argue, will naturally decrease the quality of the end product. I suppose only time will tell if they are correct.
But let’s give this some balance and ask the question: Can Wanderers afford to gamble on finding the next Zach Clough or Josh Vela, given the number of years they waited for the youth system to bear fruit?
Before the current crop came along, we’d waited since the halcyon days of Alan Stubbs and Jason McAteer for a really fine vintage of home-grown talent.
Year after year young players would be promoted to the reserves, sit around until the end of a contract and then allowed to leave, with no resale value. Every penny lost counted as evidence that the Academy was not pulling its weight.
Kyle Bartley was one of the few exceptions – sold on to Arsenal in 2007, the current Swansea City defender is possibly the only example in recent years that added profit.
The current home-spun stars like Vela, Clough et al arrived like a breath of fresh air. But, even then, you could argue had Wanderers’ injury problems not been so severe last season, they may have faced a longer wait.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing local lads like Oscar Threlkeld or Tom Walker make the grade has been one of the more rewarding aspects of my job in the last few years, and goodness knows, positives have been thin on the ground!
And I’m excited to see where they will go under Neil Lennon, a manager who quickly removed a poisonous divide between the Academy and first team that had emerged under Dougie Freedman’s reign.
For the last couple of years, the club’s senior and youth set-ups had been a case of “them and us” but the most important thing Lennon has done since walking through the door has been to get everyone back on the same message.
This week’s news is seen as a threat to that harmony – but I just wonder whether stripping back some of the excesses required as a Category One academy will give the Northern Irishman and his staff a greater scope to influence the youth system as a whole?
Freedman tried just that but failed because of various personality clashes and some questionable decisions.
Lennon has the backing of Whites coaches top to bottom. If a footballing philosophy is to be installed, then why not now?
Given the financial problems faced at first-team level it is easy to use the downgrading of the academy as just another stick to beat the hierarchy.
Yet at ground level the Elite Player Performance Plan has not always been popular.
While you might have a difficult time finding someone to admit it, the original concept of Category A academies has proved a flawed one.
For starters, many more clubs applied for the top grading than was first expected, meaning some found their noses out of joint right away.
Wanderers were one of the lucky ones, or so they thought. Six months after gaining their licence the club dropped into the Championship, and the £2.5million it took to tick all the boxes of Category A all of a sudden seemed a luxury.
That has definitely been the case in the last couple of seasons. Firstly, the club’s cash-flow has slowed to a crawl, whether that be the after-effects of Financial Fair Play, Eddie Davies pulling in the reins, or a mixture of the two, is unclear.
If Wanderers are to remain competitive in this division they need to give Neil Lennon a workable budget, and so it stands to reason that dispassionate cuts need to be made elsewhere.
Perhaps more pertinent, though, is the fact Wanderers would never have been able to compete with the finances currently being invested by Manchester City et al in their academy.
While the Premier League ‘suggested’ a budget of £2.4m when EPPP was hatched, City have blown it out of the water, pumping some £8m a year into their new youth system.
Wanderers simply cannot compete with that – they never could – and to try would be folly.
Source
After downgrading their academy from Category One status, the club have erased another legacy of the Premier League days.
In a move that could save £1million a year, fans are justifiably concerned that this could hamper the flow of young footballers coming through the system at a time when Wanderers have only just started to embrace them.
Reducing the investment, some argue, will naturally decrease the quality of the end product. I suppose only time will tell if they are correct.
But let’s give this some balance and ask the question: Can Wanderers afford to gamble on finding the next Zach Clough or Josh Vela, given the number of years they waited for the youth system to bear fruit?
Before the current crop came along, we’d waited since the halcyon days of Alan Stubbs and Jason McAteer for a really fine vintage of home-grown talent.
Year after year young players would be promoted to the reserves, sit around until the end of a contract and then allowed to leave, with no resale value. Every penny lost counted as evidence that the Academy was not pulling its weight.
Kyle Bartley was one of the few exceptions – sold on to Arsenal in 2007, the current Swansea City defender is possibly the only example in recent years that added profit.
The current home-spun stars like Vela, Clough et al arrived like a breath of fresh air. But, even then, you could argue had Wanderers’ injury problems not been so severe last season, they may have faced a longer wait.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing local lads like Oscar Threlkeld or Tom Walker make the grade has been one of the more rewarding aspects of my job in the last few years, and goodness knows, positives have been thin on the ground!
And I’m excited to see where they will go under Neil Lennon, a manager who quickly removed a poisonous divide between the Academy and first team that had emerged under Dougie Freedman’s reign.
For the last couple of years, the club’s senior and youth set-ups had been a case of “them and us” but the most important thing Lennon has done since walking through the door has been to get everyone back on the same message.
This week’s news is seen as a threat to that harmony – but I just wonder whether stripping back some of the excesses required as a Category One academy will give the Northern Irishman and his staff a greater scope to influence the youth system as a whole?
Freedman tried just that but failed because of various personality clashes and some questionable decisions.
Lennon has the backing of Whites coaches top to bottom. If a footballing philosophy is to be installed, then why not now?
Given the financial problems faced at first-team level it is easy to use the downgrading of the academy as just another stick to beat the hierarchy.
Yet at ground level the Elite Player Performance Plan has not always been popular.
While you might have a difficult time finding someone to admit it, the original concept of Category A academies has proved a flawed one.
For starters, many more clubs applied for the top grading than was first expected, meaning some found their noses out of joint right away.
Wanderers were one of the lucky ones, or so they thought. Six months after gaining their licence the club dropped into the Championship, and the £2.5million it took to tick all the boxes of Category A all of a sudden seemed a luxury.
That has definitely been the case in the last couple of seasons. Firstly, the club’s cash-flow has slowed to a crawl, whether that be the after-effects of Financial Fair Play, Eddie Davies pulling in the reins, or a mixture of the two, is unclear.
If Wanderers are to remain competitive in this division they need to give Neil Lennon a workable budget, and so it stands to reason that dispassionate cuts need to be made elsewhere.
Perhaps more pertinent, though, is the fact Wanderers would never have been able to compete with the finances currently being invested by Manchester City et al in their academy.
While the Premier League ‘suggested’ a budget of £2.4m when EPPP was hatched, City have blown it out of the water, pumping some £8m a year into their new youth system.
Wanderers simply cannot compete with that – they never could – and to try would be folly.
Source
