Crewe player to Chelsea

[MikeSB]

Unfortunately its not the FA who run football its the premier league that call the shots, the EPPP was put in place by the premier league, for the benefit of the premier league, the FA agreed to it after being told they would receive no money from the premier league if they didn't back it. I'm not sure why the football league backed the deal, they originally opposed the idea and then backed it when it was put to a vote, no doubt a meeting took place between the PL and FL and no doubt inducements were offered, not to the clubs involved though, but that's all water under the bridge I'm afraid. Unfortunately the FA is toothless when it comes to the premier league and the football league is equally toothless, so what is fair will never come into the equation and its unlikely the FA would be interested anyway, the football league certainly isn't.

Would I do the same thing? Probably and so as you said it's not his fault or the club's but these are the rules that are known that should reflect whether its worth spending £760K per season on the academy now. The club did know the effect of the EEEP and why they should not have been persuaded by a Cat2 and they could have saved a fortune by going to Cat3 as the last million pound transfer was Murphy which was 5 years ago now...So that would have saved a min of 2.5m with no downside imo anyway.

I think I have been proved right again when I said that we generally only get local lads coming in and read this lad is from Nantwich and so he could have gone to a Cat1 somewhere else but chose not to for more practical reasons as I keep saying too..Chelsea may have bought him a house or will put him up free somewhere and that's what big money does. IF he does make the grade to the first team, the club saves tens of millions in the process and so a good bit of business that is peanuts even if it doesn't. I would guess we will get a further biggish fee if he does though.

The other thing is 300K is not a bad return on any individual player and would represent 30K per year over ten years and so if more players could come through as they have and we get lots of 300K's that wouldn't be too bad either. But with Cat2 we would have to sell THREE per season on that basis alone which is a big ask. It does suggest the multi million pounds transfers from here are not going to happen often if at all now all these kids are being watched weekly and tempted away.

To me the answer is to downgrade asap, save half a million per season and then review that in 5 years time.

Good luck to him and in reality he really didn't have a choice but to accept. The ones refusing to sign contract extensions are in a different boat as we have given them first team football in order to gain recognition and I am the first to criticise such action but maybe i shouldn't because if someone offers you lets say a 100K or more sign on fee by being a free agent, would you turn that down? Again probably not and why the academy structure needs changing to reflect what is happening in the real world...

I would like someone view on how much talent this lad has and how long as it been obvious and whether coaching per se has improved him or just playing more competitive games...We all improve in some ways no matter what that is though...