Just seen the draw for the league cup, still got Grade A/1 academy U'21 teams in it. What is our current status? Would like to see us in this competition with our u'21's next year.
My brother works at Watford and said the work that was planned to upgrade our status has been delayed. So looks like we remain at tier 3.
Would you go to any of these EFL trophy games if we did get into the competition? There was a mass protest last year - until the final when Coventry took 30k.
The whole system is set up so that good players from other academies are bought on the cheap rather than their value for the Man Cities and Chelsea's. Ashley Young is case and point.
This is a good demonstration (against Arsenal youth as well!) of his talents: https://twitter.com/Sanchooo10/status/890278399662489605
We have to own the training ground or find a way round that to gain category 1 Also takes a lot of players to do that (we were up to 18yrs) and stretch to 23yrs so likely anyway to build that depth into the academy between 4 & 5 years. Already though we have seen that in certain cases we have started to attract academy players from other clubs. Even if Johnson hasn't been a success yet, we got him from Liverpool's academy who I think got him from WBA? Anyway, we are now a more attractive proposition.
We were never Cat 1. We were Cat 2/3 if I remember correctly, we were never able to afford the training ground maintenance requirements for Cat 1
Think the whole academy system was revamped around the time the Pozzo,s took over. Prior to their ownership think we were aiming for category 1 status but decision was made not to go for it as it wasn't thought worthwhile.
We were Cat 1 before Pozzos of that I'm sure. There was us and a couple of other clubs that were the only cat 1 clubs outside the premier
There were no categories until 2012/13, which was the first year in charge for the Pozzo family after they bought out Baz. It's true though that the Harefield setup influenced how EPPP was designed and that we were at he forefront of some developments before it. There was no formal category though.
When the new system came in it affected us and Crystal Palace the most I think and we had to go into catagory 3 first. Then 2 years ago we moved up to catagory 2. It was planned to go up to catagory 1 this year but we gaven't been able to do so for reasons the club know and we don't.
Like UAE said, there were no categories. We were one of three clubs outside the "Big 7" that had some kind of vociferous opinion on EPPP (if that's what you're remembering) as I remember the head of our youth development having an interview with the equivalent position at Palace and Southampton on Sky. Palace were completely against it, we weren't great fans of it either (as both of our clubs had a lot to lose) but we were happy with the mandatory introduction of a Harefield-style academy into the plan. Southampton didn't mind it because they didn't have anything to lose and at that time were a Prem club with a good academy that would've been a shoe-in for Cat 1
Apologies guys you re correct, I was confused . Before EPPP system it was two tier system , either Acadamy or Centre of Excellence and we were Academy. There were only about 30 Academies , so not many outside of the EPL which is why I was thinking we were in the top category. When we didn't apply for Cat 1 under new system was the reason why Nick Cox left .
