Youth Development and the City Academy

Started this thread, so that people can express their views. There was a danger that this subject would take over another one. So here is your opportunity.

 

I've moved this post since it is more connected with youth development

The £1mill+ I referred to was in an article on how Colchester gained Cat 2 status after it having been rejected originally. As I said, it covers development, coaching and scouting of younger players and not just scouting as you posted.

Edit - Here's a piece from the BBC about the rejected application and Colchester's philosophy. It should interest you ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/27191985

 

Personally I don't feel there is really any worth in clubs at this level spending money on a proper academy. It makes more sense doing what a couple of clubs have done and that's scrap the 16 to 23 setup completely as its almost impossible to recoup that money as at 16 you are left largely with those that aren't good enough to go elsewhere.

Instead what some clubs are doing is using that money to setup a B team. This B team doesn't waste time trying to develop their own 16 year olds. They look to pick up young players released from bigger teams in England and even often from abroad, who have had a few years getting a high level of coaching but have been released and then found their options limited. They are fairly cheap because they aren't the ones who have teams squabbling over them, often they will pick them up after the season has started when they have failed to get a club.

This B team then plays friendlies, if Man Utd u23's need a pickup game they will get a call and a payment and they even get games against first teams when they want an easy behind closed door warm up match. And its not just English teams, the likes of Brentford who operate this way have even played foreign first teams, for example I believe Slavia Prague a couple of seasons back used them as a warm up game before two Europa League matches.

Some of them when the squads are big enough even enter the B team in one of the lower leagues where player registration rules are less strict. That way they can play both a league game and a behind closed door friendly at the same time and players may play the league match one week and the friendly the next giving them a rounded experience.

And again going back to Brentford they have also done deals with teams in the catchment area like spurs. They will sell Brentford players they aren't sure about just for a sell on fee. If they end up being good enough for their original club they can buy him back at a discount and if not and he gets sold elsewhere the original club also gets a chunk of change. They also have some deals with foreign clubs along the same lines.

And even if they don't come good enough to move on up from the B side to the A side they will often still be able to sell them on and make a profit on a player they got for 'free' (And with all the paid friendlies even if they then leave for free the clubs usually made enough to cover the cost anway)

 

Your view doesn't appear to be shared widely. In 2018, 85 of the 92 clubs had an Academy with only Brentford in the top 2 tiers not having one. That suggests that 42 of the 48 clubs in the lower leagues have an Academy - mainly Cat 3's with a handful of Cat 1 & 2s.

Cat 3's are not overly expensive to run and the costs do start to escalate once Cat 2 has been granted and there might well be other approaches. But the clubs know more about what they want from their Academy and the vast majority of the lower leagues have decided to put their money into continuing with their own way of developing players of the future.

 

And how many of those clubs are actually financially viable? Guess what Brentford are.

Clubs waste all this money developing players and most who could actually be of real value to a club are snatched for about £30k in compensation by bigger clubs before they sign senior papers.

As for not expensive. Based on the amount the PL gives to fund academies in the EFL I'm not sure you can say its insignificant. Clubs get between £775k and £100k a year from the PL based on the level and that accounts for between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of the average running cost. That means the average cat 1 is costing £2.3mill a year and a Cat 4 £150k a year.

 

Brentford are imo a very run club. Over the recent years, Benham has put over £100m of his own money into Brentford which has helped to create a financially robust club. And in one sense, that's to be applauded from a life long wealthy Brentford fan. Recently they've also had the benefit of a huge one-off paper profit from selling land around the ground to allow for development of non-football innterests. On the issue of their Academy, Brentford went in a completely different direction. Given Benham's background, he dispensed with their Academy set-up and started using his own Moneyball techniques to spot undervalued players worthy of development. I'm not sure that other clubs wiould be in a position to replicate what Brentford. And there's more to running a sustainable club other than scrapping their academy.

Your estimates of how much it costs to run Academies isn't far off. Typical annual costs of a Cat 3 Academy in the EFL is in the range £200-300K. Cat 1 Academies cost significantly more. The minimum anticipated cost of running a Cat 1 is £2.5m per the EPPP guidelines and the costs escalate from there to 2 or 3 times that level. But of course the vast majority of Cat 1 Academies are in the PL (or recently relegated PL clubs) where the costs of a Cat 1 are dwarfed by some players' salaries! There aren't too many clubs in the khazi with those kinds of funds for their entire first squad let alone a Cat 1 Academy!

Where did you get the figures for how much the PL pays EFL clubs to run their academies? They don't tally with anything I've ever seen.