All good reasons but this is the one for me. You do it because it does pay for itself when you sell them on to smaller clubs. But you do it even more because you hope, if you do a good job, you will be the one with a really great player or players on your hands.Because the same players will cost you a lot less if you develop them, because the rules require that you register homegrown players and local players, because if you don't develop them someone else will and that club will make you pay the rarity, because it gives to the club and the supporters a sense of identity and because once in while you will develop a difference maker for cheap.
And once again remember that the clubs who spend the most on their academies allocate 5% of their budget, that's nothing.
Because the same players will cost you a lot less if you develop them, because the rules require that you register homegrown players and local players, because if you don't develop them someone else will and that club will make you pay the rarity, because it gives to the club and the supporters a sense of identity and because once in while you will develop a difference maker for cheap.
And once again remember that the clubs who spend the most on their academies allocate 5% of their budget, that's nothing.
These clubs are too big for that, they have nothing to gain from it and it has nothing to do with academy football, if you buy 18 years old players you have to keep them otherwise they won't be considered homegrown or local players.
5% of our turnover is over £20m. Looking at the players currently coming through I'd prefer that in the bank to spend on a player that has a good chance of making it. The rules on homegrown players are that weak that I'm not sure that is a real incentive at all. If Man City end up developing Tyler Blackett I'm sure we'll survive as a club.
The partnership might mean you pay them £4-5m a year. For even a club like Benfica that would represent 5% of their annual turnover, for Sporting/Feyenoord nearer 10%. Do you really think they're going to turn down such a large, and most importantly guaranteed payment every season? Almost certainly not, especially when they would see other benefits as well, such as players being loaned back for a couple of seasons whilst we pay the salary.
The "homegrown" quota isn't an issue; part of it is to do with English trained players no matter what academy they came from, which we'll always have in an abundance (Jones, Smalling, Shaw, Rooney, Carrick), the other part is a few players in a squad of 25 that don't get used anyway.
5% is the "max" recorded in the entire UEFA zone and that's probably a club with "low" budget since Barcelona spend the most with 10m which represents around 2% of their budget. (It's probably Lens)
United have nothing to gain in that deal, unless if you are thinking that Benfica will sell us players on the cheap, in that case they have nothing to gain from it. As for the homegrown part the UEFA requires 4 players formed locally(in the club) and 4 players formed in the country, and if you don't produce them yourself you will be shafted by the clubs that produce them.
This strikes me as a red herring. The team is always going to have first team players with who they'll be competing, whether they themselves are graduates of the academy surely isn't relevant?When people speak about how we haven't developed many players since the class of 92 they seem to ignore the fact that there was less space for the academy players that came after that as a result of how successful and the longevity of the careers which the class of 92 had. The 2 Neville's, Butt, Beckham, Scholes and Giggs were all regulars for 10+ years as were O'Shea and Brown who came in later and both had long careers with the club so a number of talented youth players actually had their path to the first team blocked by the quality of the youth players who came before them which isn't really a failing of the academy. The current under 18 squad probably has the highest number of potential first team players of any team since the Rossi and Pique team with all of Tuanzebe, Williams, Fosu Mensah, Gribbin & Rashford all having been involved with the first team already and Gomes rated as 1 of the best players of his age in the world so this continuing theme which the media is running with that everything about the academy is a mess just isn't backed up by what's actually happening.
This strikes me as a red herring. The team is always going to have first team players with who they'll be competing, whether they themselves are graduates of the academy surely isn't relevant?
And anyway we've been crying out for quality in all sorts of positions for many years, hence our struggles with the likes of Anderson, Djemba, Miller etc. Even Chadwick got games for a while. If the quality had been there, there were opportunities for them in pretty much any position they'd happened to play in.
Have you seen the academy and under 21s look boring this season playing the same formations and possesion based philosophy of the first team? You are naive indeed if you imagine LVG is having zero in put in how are youth teams operate and play.
I feel sorry for you,i really do.
Across all the Premier League academies over the last decade, how many "Scholes'" have been produced who have had the required ability to stay in United's first team for 10 years?
Perhaps:
Southampton - Shaw, Bale, maybe Walcott, Ward-Prowse as a long shot?
Spurs - Kane?
Arsenal - Wilshere except he's broken and a twat
Everton - Possibly Barkley, possibly Stones
Blackburn - Phil Jones possibly
Not so easy as all that is it?
Personally I think Evans is as talented as most of those names, just never quite got the fitness together and that last little bit of mental strength required to play top level football.
He didn't come from the Everton academy, he was signed from Barnsley and had already played senior games for them.
Sterling started at QPRFor me it's more relevant to look at the area. It seems that after Owen the north of england didn't produce a lot of talents other than Welbeck, Sterling, Cleverley, Fletcher and a handful of other players. The youth specialist might have an answer to that question but it seems that England had a very difficult time in the 2000s, the problem seems to be systemic. Southampton are producing players now and seem to have replaced West ham but why West Ham stopped being productive and why were they productive in the first place?
...or the structuring within the academy has changed and the club felt there was no need for his position to actually exist. Hence why he decided to move on.
That specifically says that the structure needs changing and the job might be too big for one guy. It's also Andy's opinion and while he's well connected, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there has been a reshuffle (of jobs rather than personnel) with no announcement.
I hope so.This is what I have been saying for a while. I think it's clear that we haven't hired someone because we're planning a top to toe overhaul of the academy to bring us up to date and in-line or ahead of City.
There's no point hiring someone for the role of "Director" if it is as yet undecided what approach the whole academy is going to be looking to take. It's up to the academy director to overlook everything in the academy from scouting to coaching and if the plan is for a complete overhaul it would be daft to employ someone who is then unable to make any sort of changes while he waits for the impending overhaul.
