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Thank you for making the argument AGAINST your own argument! Of course the Directors were disappointed as that would prove that we were still producing the goods. The other way of looking at it is that the players they expected bids for will be better in the summer... or the January 2020 transfer window. It’s probably been 5 years since we had a group of young players with the potential to both make us better AND both earn and SAVE, yes save, us money. It may have escaped your notice that, during our excellent run of form from late December onwards, 6 or 7 of the starting 11 were Academy graduates, most of them 21yo or less - and a fair proportion of the bench too.
We assume it escaped your notice as you didn’t seem to contribute very often when we were winning.
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They are performing in a poor league and some can not cope with that so thats no praise is it!! Anyway the club now has to find money for the compensation claims to come in for the abuse it caused running an Academy and that could be the end of the club,never mind the Academy.Originally Posted by AstonAlex
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Seems ManC are indeed looking to pay 'millions' to those who were abused during their time when they were at the club and and so difficult to see how other clubs will not have to do much the same thing? I suspect the Directors at these clubs will be very very worried outside of the PL that is..
Just to say the performance of Tranmere having just been promoted from non league and now in the play offs 'suggest' there is not that much difference between the lower leagues and the National League and when you consider that many of these players are part time and yet get better wages than we pay and does 'suggest' there are many players out there that do not need to come through costly academies and do not have to wait ten years to see whether they can make the grade. We have to remember that we have to cough up £760,000 each season and that would cover a lot of wages to be able to pay players at these levels..Its now many years since we got a decent transfer fee and so that is just a matter of time before its downgraded...IF we last that long!
If we have to pay millions out in compensation then it could cause us to go into administration. And the academy will be first to go.
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It is a tricky call with the academy as it has served us so well in the past, there is a couple of players who may be attracting interest but in reality they will be £200,000 to £300,000 each at the most and that does not cover the debts so on balance at the moment a downgrade would probably be the best course of action.
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I'm just going to ask all of you anti academy people the same question again, as none of you answered it last time and I'm guessing none of you will answer it this time.
Even if you're right and the academy costs us more than it saves us (I don't think you are btw)
Why do you think our current major share holder would reinvest any money saved from not having an academy into the first team?
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If only there were still a "Like" option!!
The argument against the Academy rears it's head periodically, especially when we are in a lean spell. Just a quick reminder, to backup Aston's point, our match day squad this season both when losing AND winning has been populated by 11 or 12 Academy lads most of whom will be on very low wages. You look at Ng, Pickering and one or two others and you can see some very good players developing. In truth, we may not get 7 figure sums for any of them, but we will get decent fees for at least 2 right now. And the fact that we have retained their services on new contracts is down to the manager and the board and, of course, the players themselves. Long live the Academy!
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I'm not anti academy. Its the level of it that is costing us 760,000 pounds a season which are the rules set by the FA. Its obvious that means we have to sell a player(s) for that just to break even. So for the last say 5 years that would equate to circa 4 million pounds and perhaps someone can advise who we have sold for 4 millions over that period? The club must still be funding the academy from the likes of Nick Powell etc and so it has to be just a matter of time before they have no choice to downgrade it to a level commensurate with clubs our size. You also have to measure what success we have had for that money over that last period of time. Lots of clubs our size and less seem to be able to manage quite well with a lower level and achieve better results than us and shows there are other ways of doing that.
Its always been my opinion that the academy level has minimal impact on any local lads who's parents would find it very very difficult to take them much farther afield even to Cat 1 academies like Stoke, City, United and Liverpool. Unless someone knows who they are? Most clubs have an academy even non league. Dario was very successful with one or two helpers and we played at Shavington.
I suspect the money is near or has run out and so there will be no money left for any Director? Its an odd situation in some ways as the more expensive players are in the PL one would think young talent would bring more in for clubs like ours but they get hundreds of millions each season now in income and City have just signed a kit contract with someone for 600 millions over 5 years etc. Without the vast revenue from TV and so will buy ready mades. Even the Championship clubs get millions now. I'm sure the club know all this though but they never tell us even how the lease at RH is going on that is ending shortly?
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Every league club and lots of non league clubs have players on low wages without having to sponsor them for ten years in an academy. The problem is when you have them like ours at vast cost then you have to play them no matter how good or bad they are.
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You've not answered my question. If we scrap the academy and ,by some miracle you're right, and it saves us money why would that money go to the first team?
Our major shareholder has continually taken money out of the club, why would he not take that money?
Is your plan to spend it before he notices? We tell him to come round on the Wednesday to pick it up and then on Tuesday we nip down to league 2 Aldi and get a six pack of Anthony Grants?
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I'm obviously not making myself clear..One Director did take money out some years ago and allegedly still owes some of that to the club and presumably why the High Court case which again presumably been settled out of court. We still don't know the details as the the club has never been transparent in such things. But I doubt anyone is taking money out now. I could be wrong!
We know the academy is taking circa 760,000 pounds to run and it was Dario that said we had to sell a player EACH season for 500,000 to break even and that was some years ago. So could that 4 million we have spent on the academy over the last 5 years been 'better' spent on the first team and therefore helped us to remain in L1 and therefore higher subsidies from the FA? I've always said half the transfer fees should have gone into the First team which after all is the only reason we have a club isn't it? But didn't one Director say the 'most' important thing about CAFC was the academy, suggesting the First team came second so to speak?
Did we not expect the major shareholder to have been ousted some time ago and if not, why not?
If academy players are on no more than a hundred pounds a week when they come into the first team? Does any of us really know what money they are on throughout the club? Its never been made public as far as I know but lets double that to 10 grand a year for them and so how many players can we get for 760K? Erm, 76?
Ironically said in jest but shows that money that is spent each season on an unknown output does seem to be a poor business model over the last 5 years even though it was OK before that. Business should be able to move with the times or they do go OUT of business...
I'm waiting to see how much compensation the club will have to pay out on that vexed question which will impact on everything to do with the club's finances, its survival and viability and of course its reputation..
I say again, I'm not against the academy principle, just the level and its running costs that must impact on the first team and the fact that 11 graduates get to play lower league standard is at least not my idea of money well spent when such standard of player is available by the thousands elsewhere without needing 10 years of coaching expenses. Its still amazes me how few of the PL academy players actually make the grade? And many of them are on vast wages too is what I have read..
Last edited by MikeSB; 13-03-2019 at 05:29 PM.
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