Quote Originally Posted by baggiematt View Post
£2m a season for an academy...it funds itself. There's been a lot of smaller sales like Leko (£1.1M), Harper (£500k), Ferguson (£900k) and the lad this season for £1m. Add that to Saido and now O'Shea, it's actually made us a lot of money. We have Taylor, Gardner Hickmanl, Griffiths, Palmer and Ashworth supplementing the side this season.

With the price of young English talent it's incredibly foolish not to grow your own. Brighton have a strong academy that produced Ben White. Brentford have a lot of competitors for talent so they are in a different situation to us but if you look over the fence to Fulham, they have produced some great young talent in recent years.

We should just buy well AND have an academy.
The players you’ve mentioned in or about the first team this season only TGH has stepped up but his decision making is poor. The academy rarely gives us talent the likes of a Gallagher or a Harvey Barnes. Saido when he was playing well and Bryan Robson are about the only two players I can think of that you would have been proud to have in the team. Is it worth having an academy? Probably, but good scouting can pick the best of a larger bunch from elsewhere.