Reply With QuoteHappy Christmas everyone and Hope the New year sees us improving. The problem is, us older ones who have witnessed both good and bad over the last 50-60 years are accused of seeing things through rose tinted specs asd we tend to do and so dwell on the better times we have in our lives. That's natural. In those far off days before academies were even thought of we had two teams, the first team and a reserve team, where the pitch was played on weekly and there were some great matches too. People say todays players are fitter and quicker and that may be true but to play 90 mins on heavy pitches was no pick nick and no subs to come on either. The plain fact is no club NEEDS an academy, they are nice to have IF you can afford them. Like the PL but its also a FACT that 90% of L1 and L2 clubs don't have Cat2 and some not even Cat3. Its arguable that the difference between the National League and L2 is negligible and yet we read that some players there get more wages than we can afford and so somebody must be paying them. None will have official academies but almost all of them will have facilities for there local youngsters to go along to see if they are good enough. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to provide academies and facilities and coaching staff for 5-10 year olds when nobody can foresee their development both physical and mental at 20? We say our academy players need a hundred league games to see and then some. Barcelona and ManU/ManC can afford it yet less than 5% of their academy players make the grade and that should tell us something.Originally Posted by Wartman
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of players available in the UK and worldwide now that would jump at playing for lower league and National league clubs but we can't sign them as we have too many of our own. I always say when we we have played non league, how many of our players are better than theirs? That surely is the measure. It could be my age but can't get much pleasure from games where we now see two or three goal scoring chances a game in 90 odd minutes. That surely is NOT how the game should be played with all the coaching they get costing hundreds of thousands and why we seem to see mostly foreign players in the PL nowadays. I wonder if natural talent has anything to do with it?
The Board has a choice. They keep the Cat2 academy at 760K per season or they downgrade and maybe even getting rid of the academy altogether like some clubs have done while still recruiting a few kids on the books to train with us is a far better alternative. The principle should be that the gate money and other monies from the FA should cover the costs of the players wages plus all the other costs and that seems sensible at our level anyway. To have a model that depends on 500,000 pounds a season on transfer income was OK at a time when that worked. I don't subscribe to the idea that it would cost more for amateur incoming players and other Pro's from other clubs. And why we NEED to continue with our model. But then the board will know but the real pain for fans is none of them tell us what their longer term plan is...ie they should be in the business of growing mushrooms!
Happy new year all..
Mike
