Tough one to call here. Direct our ire at Pozzo, or the disgusting system designed to allow the big clubs to hoover up any and all talented kids from the small clubs, at minimal expense?
Their short term approach doesn’t encourage head coaches to take a risk on youth. That’s the biggest issue. Could have a top Cat 1 academy but if there’s no pathway to the first team youngsters will walk. But @luke_golden is right that the whole system is rotten too.
Another rumour today that he's off to City. So we get 25k for every year of his development from U12-U16, no idea how long he's been with us though. Looks like the most we could hope for is 100k, absolutely criminal. That's what City pay John Stones a week! Which is also criminal...
Only strengthens the reasoning as to why we don't bother upgrading the academy status. Waste of time.
Wouldn't upgrading the academy prevent this to some extent? Though admittedly I'm not sure of the cost. Not sure what the point is of having a tier 2 or 3 academy though. Just ditch it entirely.
Agreed. Just ditch It entirely and hoover up some of the releases from the big 6. There is no point in finding a prem quality player every couple of years and seeing him leave for a bigger club. We are basically paying for the academy to provide prem quality players for our opponents.
Sickening. Really sickening. Abu Dhabi not only scour along with the other big clubs domestic clubs of any promising players but are actively creating partnerships globally to siphon up kids from abroad before anyone has heard of them. Even clubs with a top class academy like WBA have suffered the depredations of these vultures. Absolutely hate Abu Dhabi and the bald fraud and all they represent along with the other scummy six with a huge passion. If Galvez lives up to expectation thats another fifteen to twenty million pounds lost. One could imagine him turning out for a couple of seasons in the past for us before disappearing for a sizeable fee like Young. Not any more. We were shafted over Sancho and once again. All the other clubs outside the six need to take a stand and put this farcical practice to an end. I hope he ends up playing for Bishops Stortford.
I agree, but it’s not the kids fault. I hope he has a successful career. The FA need to grow a pair of pumpkin sized balls to stand up against the top 6 but they won’t. We just saw that with the farce of the super league. They are so scared of them. The other professional teams need to come together and demand immediate action and change. It needs to be made fairer, but the FA don’t care about that. All they care about is their pockets being lined by the top 6.
Just ***** LOL at getting annoyed about this. We do exactly the same thing to clubs lower down the pecking order than us.
Not sure I can ever remember us picking up a highly rated 15/16 year old academy prospect from another club. If anything we tend to do the opposite, picking up dross that's been released by other academies.
Done deal. City offered us a choice of player in return but we declined. Mogi Bayat has a guy who has played 8 games in two seasons in the Belgian second division for us instead.
Arsenal also signed Romari Forde (a talented winger) from our U-15 squad last October. He had been with the club for 8 years. It is happening regularly.
No, they can still poach players for fixed fees. It's utter nonsense. To even qualify as a cat 1, we need to have 18 full time academy staff (I'm not sure we even have 18 full time staff for the first team) and a budget of something like 2.5 million a year. And even then, Man City can stroll in an steal your up and coming star for next to nothing. We should honestly just scrap our academy and run a Brentford style B team. The system is rigged, so there's no point participating in it.
As a category one academy we'd still only get 40k per year that he's been with us. The whole thing is set up for the big clubs to cherry pick talent. If the club really are serious about the academy now then we can be any category we like but it won't mean a thing if kids don't start seeing a path to first team football. I don't even mean playing for our first team either, our use of the loan system is abysmal. Alright you can't make teams take our players and our U23s this season were a pretty poor group, but how many local teams do we have near us? Kings Langley, Hemel, Wealdstone, St Albans etc, why haven't we got partnerships with these teams so that they all take younger players off us? They're going to learn a lot more playing for points in non-league than they are in U23/U18 football. Forde and Hunter have been brilliant for the U18s and certainly look physically ready for men's football, but they're probably going to spend a season playing pointless games in the U23s next season.
Some go to Wealdstone /Hemel don’t they but hardly play ? We need to make sure they are getting games like the top Premier league clubs do when sending players out on loan.
Agree with you. We also just need to start being smarter as a club as well though. There’s a reason that during league cup games and FA Cups games teams shove their promising youngsters on the bench. Doesn’t matter if their 16/17/18 bring them on in injury time of the second half so they make a first team appearance, the outcome is more money for us when they get poached. We knew Galvez was a great prospect, so why not put him on the bench against Oxford, Newport and Man Utd. This is what we should be doing. Bosun Lawal, Lo-Everton etc should all be on the bench for our league cup game this season.
How much does it cost to run a Cat 1 academy? Is it more than the slightly more money we'd have got for Galvez, Sancho and others had we not downgraded? It's a romantic idea to field a team of youth products, but how common is it among Premier League and top Championship teams? Maybe we should do what Brentford, Brum and Huddersfield do and just sack off the academy and have a B team, we seem to have a good eye for a player in that 18-21 age category, although it's fair to say we could do a better job of giving the likes of Quina, Wilmot and Penaranda a route to the first team
Except as has been proven yet again with Galvez it clearly is the default that any of our top young players will join one of the top clubs as soon as they make an offer. He did not "prove your point" at all. The reason why there is "no path to the first team" for the youngsters we have on our books is because none of the youngsters we're left with on our books by the time they're old enough to play are good enough for the first team. If Sancho was still with us at 17/18 then of course he would have gotten first team minutes for us - we were having to use the likes of Amrabat, Hughes and Femenia as wingers ffs. The youth we're left with have no path to the first team because they're not good enough to get minutes.
Hmm, it seems you both make a sincere, if mistaken, claim that our youngsters leave because supposedly there's no path to the first team for them. Yet, once it is demonstrated that there is a path to the first team for them you revert to your usual, tedious snark. Clearly consistency of your own opinions is less important to you than acting like a two-bit troll.
I really wasn't impressed by either of them in our last FA Youth Cup game - I posted that only Lo-Everton looked currently good enough to go out on loan to a decent level of men's football and surprise surprise he was the one who was sent out on loan as soon we were knocked out of the competition. He has done well and I think should be in League One or League Two next season. He's now the closest thing we have to a youth player with a chance of making it, though he's 18 and still a way off.
Maybe I’m missing something but surely the B team route wouldn’t stop this happening? Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the B team ultimately just reduce the amount of teams outside of the first team to one, and give you the ability to play more competitive games? I can see how it would help players develop better, but it surely wouldn’t enable us to ringfence talent like Galvez any differently?
The B team system is more for slightly older players, on the basis that they'll get into the first team soon. Galvez can work his nuts off at City, and I'm sure he'll benefit from what must be some great facilities, but there's no guarantee of him getting anywhere near the first team
The youth system is flawed. Anyone who is any good in an academy gets swept up by the big teams for a paltry fee it’s a joke. It’s a no brainier for the big clubs. As fans we are then left wondering why we don’t bring any kids through and whether it’s to do with the pathway - well it’s not, just anyone good enough is taken from us before they get to the first team and are then worth millions. Unless the system changes I can see lots of clubs just not bothering with youth systems and more of these independent academies being created.
Exactly this. There's a reason why none of the players who stick around to make it to our u23 squad ever go on to exceed the level we're playing at. They were never going to be good enough. I think the absolute highest level any of our academy drop outs has reached is George Byers, who made a decent amount of appearances in the Championship for Swansea while we were in the PL. He'll likely be loaned out to League One this season. The vast majority who 'never get a chance' end up at Wealdstone, St Albans etc.
The Premier League pressurized EFL clubs into voting for EPPP in 2011 by threatening to withdraw all youth development funding if the deal was not accepted. I remember that Watford voted against it, although there was a large majority of EFL clubs in favour. A number of Division 1 and Division 2 clubs have now closed their academies, including Salford (owned by the Manchester Utd. former players) at the beginning of this season. Brentford closed their academy at the end of the 2016 season and Birmingham (who were responsible for developing Jude Bellingham) announced in December 2020 that they will be replacing their Development Squad with a B Team and their academy with a C Team. There may also be other factors involved in the closure of these academies, but EPPP is certainly a major one. EPPP may have helped to improve the quality of young players in England's national team in the short-term, but the main beneficiaries have been the 'Big Six' clubs. I fail to see how the academy closures will help the long-term development of youth football in England.
All these young foreigns we've got have been poached from somewhere or other. Just ***** LMAO if you think we are not scum of the earth like all the rest.
