He's a fool for leaving us to go to Chelsea of all clubs. Arsenal were apparently interested as well which made a degree of sense if he went as at least they do give players a chance, Chelsea offer money but no career progression at all. 10 years Abromovich has been at Chelsea and Ryan Bertrand is the sole academy product that has came through despite spending tens of millions bringing the best youth players in the world in. And even he is only back up left back with a handful of appearences, presumably he'll have to leave if he ever wants to play first team regularly. I can see the temptation for some players who are unsure of their career but he's already in most our first team squads, he'll be lucky to play in the premier league again in the next 5 years now - even if he does well. Frankly I expect him to take the Bostock route.
It really makes a mockery of the EPPP system that it encourages players to join the top clubs. Most of whom haven't produced a player in years. It really only encourages all the best talents in the country to go to Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Spurs for a set fee of 200k. The FA will only have themselves to blame when they somehow manage to make the national team worse by encouraging its best young players to join clubs they'll never play at, its a stupid plan. Man City will go the same way as Chelsea. They're spending a fortune on their academy as well but both clubs somehow fail to realise you eventually have to play those players if you ever want to see them get better. The fact is for clubs with an open chequebook the temptation to spend 25m on a Spanish international with 30 caps will always outweigh any want to play an academy player. How the FA fail to see this I don't know.
West Brom have lost 2 academy players in a matter of days, and are expected to pay 3m a year to uphold category one status in the current plans, despite the current plans making it far easier for bigger clubs to steal all the best players. The clubs already talking about closing the academy if this isn't changed, other clubs aren't happy either, its a disaster for English football that will set England back even further than it already is.
