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Someone once said," There's none so happy as those who are happiest when they are miserable". I have often called myself a pessimist (and I've been following the Alex for 56 years) but I can, sometimes, look on the brighter side of life!
(Had to sing that last weekend!😀)
I thought it just layed bare the fact we can’t compete at league 1 or even league 2 level and that it is 100% about the academy with the first team a very poor second, which has been shown to be true in glorious technicolour this year. When the club is talking about not being able to compete with clubs offering £50k for players that is truly pathetic, where is all the money from the sales of the players from this glorious academy of ours ? If we continue down this road non league football is just around the corner and that is not in doubt. The club is still stuck in the 1990s when undoubtedly the academy was a massive influence on our success however times have changed and so must we or we will be doomed and until the board accept this and change they are sleep walking into oblivion called non league football where we will never escape.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timmy58
Yes let's ditch the academy and save £500,000. Then we can buy 3 players for £150,000 leaving £350000. We then can pay these player just over £2000 pw leaving nothing. Then fingers crossed they are a success or we go the way of say Notts CountyQuote:
Originally Posted by Wartman
Quote:
Originally Posted by out0lunch
I have re read my post and I can’t see anywhere that I said ditch the academy, so please don’t put words into my mouth. However do we really need Cat 2 ? When we clearly cannot afford it, interestingly Wycombe have a Cat 4 academy did we look better than them today for our Cat 2 status academy ? You should only spend what you can afford and we can’t afford a Cat 2 academy, it is also interesting that we are struggling financially to provide a first team squad capable of competing in league 1 and you could also argue that this current squad would also struggle in league 2 it is true to say that the academy is now losing money as it was said we needed to sell 1 x 1 million pound player a season to make a small profit, it might frighten you yo know that we did not get that for the sale of 2 of our most recent sales added together Dale and Kirk where we only managed 600k in total please can you explain to me why we pursue this clearly failing business model.
If we can't afford £50K to buy a player then we suerly cannot afford to outlay £760K PER season on a Cat2 academy but the problem is they think like some fans do on here where if you question it they think we are suggesting getting rid of the current one but every single club in the world has an academy even the 5th tier of the National League...I can't figure it why they can't figure this out and living in a bygone age where they think we can sell a player for 5m....
Maybe we are a National league standard team now and so is that so bad. Who was it that said we go where the kids take us? Yup that is obviously back to where we started 100 years ago and 20m spent on the academy to show for it....I thought a new Chairman would know what level of academy we can afford and its certainly not Cat2....I think some of us will be vindicated in due course..
The problem with a lot of fans on this forum is they are frightened of change and or devoid of vision, and whilst they are happy to be treated like mushrooms kept in the dark and fed on ****e the board will continue to treat them so. A lot of the arguments in favour of the academy are born out of the early 90s ideology where most of them are still stuck.Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeSB
Things will naturally come to a head in 2/3 years time when our peppercorn rent lease with Reaseheath College runs out. I believe zero chance of them renewing because they want the land to expand themselves. What cost of a relocation, it will run into millions?