TheAllestreeRam

Totally agree. The academy players have been pushed forwards over the last two seasons because of our failings in senior level recruitment. It's no coincidence that Mel said he wasn't putting any more money in, we started seeing loads of academy players in the team. We need to address the recruitment problem properly otherwise we will never get anywhere.

*unproven quality. 
I dont feel as though producing four left backs in a row that can play at championship level is realistic, considering its never been done before by any club really (If someone can find one then great). If we sold buchanan this summer or even next, do we think Archie is ready and of the same quality, if not better? And then again with Malone? 
It might be possible, but there isnt any evidence of it working elsewhere. The fact that so few players up until 2016 ever made a mark on the first team suggests this. If the squad was supplemented with smart signings as well to take the pressure off the young players or even allow them to go out on loan (which few of ours seem to do) then I think that might yield better results. 
As I have said before I am not discussing the quality of the current crop, but only knight and buchanan managed to nail down a regular spot this season despite the dire competition for places...
'Nearly all was' an exaggeration but even half seems to be very ambitious based on previous years, and yes U23 football has changed now but even if you doubled what we were getting before, its still probably not enough.  
 
 

I think we are talking about different things here. You seem to be arguing for the quality in the academy, which I dont dispute. 
I am talking purely about the business model. I am scepticle of the long term sustainability of relying on the academy for both first team players and player sales. Even the best academies only produce a very small handful of players that are good enough for first team level, most with about 1/2 at a time. Chelsea and united have a particularly good crop at the moment which has skewed things slightly with 3/4 players. It may well be the case that the U23 league improves the amount of players coming through that are first team quality, but the current crop arent yet good enough (as this season has shown) and we are gambling heavily on them improving very quickly to avoid relegation. And if this new crop do succeed, then we will need 5/6 ready to take their place and so on as some will surely be sold whether the club want to sell or not.
For the model to work, we would need nearly everyone on that list from each year to be first team quality or higher. We might just disagree on how likely this is and how sustainable it is as a business model, which is fine.
I have watched an awful lot of our u18 and u23's. 

I have no reason to challenge your numbers, so as you say.. Break even, I still struggle to see the point. It could be argued that these are golden years for the academy but as we have seen with Southampton, that is difficult to maintain.
 
Bit of double accounting there.. If we take Bogle, Lowe etal, You have just used them to cover academy costs. They can't save the world at the same time bar an offset I am guessing. Will be interesting to see how long we keep the other mentioned and also what their market worth is.

Could be a little controversial but I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on the current academy model. 
Here are mine:
Back in ~2015 Mel made the statement that he wanted around half of the first team to be made up on academy players within 5 years. Here we are at that point and that hasnt seemed to materialise. I can understand the model given our continuous failure in the transfer market and heavy investment in the academy. Develop younger and sell on for profit makes sense, bringing through player with 'the Derby way' who can slot into the first team, offer the best prospects in the country an easy path into championship level football to attract the best. However I am sceptical whether this can happen in reality. 
I cant think of another club in world football that has half their team made up of academy players and still remain competitive (maybe Athletic Bilbao?). 
If the model is also to sell the academy players when they can command a fee, which is seems to be the case (bogle, lowe, whittaker) then how can we be competitive while also selling the best our academy produces? We would probably need to be churning out a Will Hughes or Bogle in half of the positions in the team every 3/4 years if promotion/the premier league is still the end goal. I dont think we can sell players and replace them at that rate. 
I also dont think that we are able to bring in the best the country has to offer, and when we do have them, the bigger academies can still poach them for pennies (Kellan Gordon). 
This certainly isnt an academy bashing post either, I think the young lads have done really well under the circumstances this season, but I think too much has been asked of them before they are really ready. 
Do we need to have a bit of a rethink if there is a change in ownership? 

Catch 22. Lower Div 2 teams have a problem with academies or Centres of Excellence, they are shedding these as they can’t afford them and they can’t attract the best players. Championship teams are just developing for bigger clubs. 
The big 5 just sit there like vultures and wait for players to develop and then scoop them up and derisory amounts. We may get a couple through like this season and Sibley and Knight could well be sold. For how much, we will need to see. 
IMO with our financial position, we are better recruiting, rather than developing..

Just a couple of points on Southampton academy being as its my local one...
- had 30m invested in it 10 years ago
- Southampton regionally has a far larger catchment area. The nearest decent sized rivals are really the London clubs 80 miles away
- is set up with similar objectives and structures to Derby, so looks like Mel trying to emulate.
- most important..it hasn't produced anything of note recently. Ward prowse and Luke Shaw made their first team debuts 10 years ago! Most recent player coming through is Danny ings and Sam Gallagher. 
All of which shows how difficult it is to sustain structures like an academy and how good scouting analysis etc is still important.

A few thoughts on this.
I always enjoy seeing a new player from the Academy break into the first team, and in recent years some of them have been excellent - Bogle, Lowe, Sibley, the list goes on.
If we are headed for a short term future in which we are strapped for cash, it's the only way to survive in the Championship as far as I can see, because it seems that big money purchases are out of the question for now.
The other side of the coin is this however.  Running an Academy takes money, and most of the players we produce won't make the Rams first team.  To some extent we are developing players who then get sold before we have seen them at their best, and for less money than they will soon be worth (unless we insert valuation or sell on clauses in the contract when they are sold).  Therefore, in order to produce a Bogle or a Lowe we are spending probably more money than it would cost to sign an established 25-30 year old journeyman.
One more thing that I've noticed.  All the players that have emerged from the Academy in recent years seem to be the same type of player - skilful, quick, exciting going forward BUT also defensively fragile and liable to not be in position when we are under the cosh and about to concede from yet another set piece.  (To be fair, Max Bird has proved the exception to this rule I admit).
Where are the goalkeepers, centre backs, big #9s etc coming up from the Academy?  Or do we preselect, when they are young, boys who might become the next Will Hughes but not the next Curtis Davies or Scott Carson or CKR?  Or is it that only the quick, skilful players show up for trials?  If so, what are we doing to try to find other types of young players?   We need those kind of 'solid' players coming through as well as the skilful midfielders, of which we seem to have an abundance. 
For example, would we sign up a very young version of Akinfenwa to the Academy?  People may scoff at this example, but the fact is that the guy has had a 15 year professional career and scored a lot of goals, albeit at a lower level.  Would we sign a very young version of Peter Crouch either?  Or even Gazza?
The ability to spot talent that is housed within a non-standard individual (non-standard mentally &/or physically) was surely part of the genius of Peter Taylor.  Teams used to be full of characters, eccentrics and strange looking people - Nobby Stiles, anyone?  Archie Gemmill?  Would those types get signed now, or do we always go for the slim, athletic, average to tall height, skilful rather than solid or gutsy type of youngster, and thereby miss potential in other positions in the early stages?  Are we at risk of producing an assembly line of Hughes/Bogle type clones because they are easier to spot at a young age than a potentially great GK or CB or big #9?
I don't know the answer I admit, but I have worked in education and I do know enough to know that guts, character, resilience and a determination to improve often count for more in the end than natural talent.  How then does one judge guts, character, resilience and determination in an 11 year old?  If the next Jamie Vardy turned up at the Academy would we be able to spot him?  I hope so!

It's the future of the club because at present it isnt paying dividends.
As the point made, very well I may add, introducing so many young players in at the same time isnt working, or we wouldn't have been so bad last season.
The original poster wasnt calling into question the academy, he was questioning the model, the business plan of having 5 or 6 academy players in at the same time.
It is no coincidence that the 2 most valuable players we have produced, Will Hughes and Hendrick, were introduced in a competitive, quality football team, rather the one we have at the minute. 
One or 2 young players to complement a good team is the way forward, not 5 or 6 to plug the gaps made by injuries and lack of recruitment.

Would be interested to see those numbers, are they published? How many years of development in those players, does it justify the resale? 
As far as the other points, maybe in our current circumstances it has helped but what is the mission statement of an academy?
To save a club financially or build a future.. I am sure the Morris vision was the latter.
@DarkFruitsRam7 mentions in his post about journeyman championship players, correct, poor investments..  So we come back to the ‘R’ word again.  Could we have 6 mill a year by buying better younger prospects who can still be sold on (if needed) or continue on the same journey? Like I said just my opinion, we would be better saving the money.

In which case, why would it be deemed a waste of money, out of interest? Not aimed at you, more at @Angry Ram.
Perhaps you could argue the ongoing costs are the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of Mel’s enthusiasm for funding the club. But if they’re irrelevant to FFP, are they not irrelevant to our current financial struggles, which are FFP-based? 
Unless it has a significant effect on our transfer budget? But even so, I’d rather us get our recruitment in order before spunking more money on established Championship players with a low ceiling and minimal resale value.

Depressing?
I'm finding it a really good read to be honest.
The questions being raised are very good and fair, given that we escaped relegation at the 11th hour, are a team in decline and are in a financial mess.
The academy is clearly the future of the club, but the question is fair, given the state of the club, is the current academy model working? 

Possibly but Brentford have made record profits, moved to a new stadium and got promoted to the premier league after two third place finishes... I take them for what they are right now, which is massively successful. 

We really are in the poo if the academy has to pay all the bills.

Norwich have been able to do it quite successfully over the last few years but they recruit really well on the senior front and so are able to create a genuinely good team. 

While your points are valid, I only really used Brentford as an example of a club who have put a heavy focus on smart recruitment. I could have used other clubs as examples.
The point being, a focus on recruitment gambles on your ability to pick the right people from the talent pool. A focus on the academy gambles on whether the talent pool is even there at all.

I have had my issues with Mel regarding the Academy and the 5 player dictate .
It was a statement he maybe would have been better not making .
It is naive to think the Academy project has all the answers but there is no doubt it has kept the club afloat though recently by us getting big fees for the likes of Bogle,Whitaker and Lowe. 

Relying on the academy to find and produce players for the first team is a massive gamble and you certainly shouldn't be relying upon 5 or 6 of the first team coming from the grass roots at this level. I think realistically if we produce 1 young player a year who isn't picked up early on by a bigger team and they make the grade we'd be doing very well. Even extremely promising academy products of ours in the past who have made the grade initially have fallen down the league pyramid for all sorts of different reasons.
To make a good championship player is not an easy task, how many have we managed in the last 10 years? Hughes, Hendrik (signed as a youth from Ireland), Bogle and no more immediately spring to mind. I might be missing some obvious ones though so please correct me if I'm wrong. Sibley might turn out to be good although he has that lee Holmes feel to me, but I'm thoroughly unconvinced by Knight and Bird in the longer term to be good players at this level.  Ditto with Buchanan who had a torrid last half of the season. 
Brentford got rid of their academy but in fairness they're in the catchment area of London so they'd be getting the dregs of youth footballers in the area given they have Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Crystal Palace, Charlton, and watford basically sitting on their doorstep. The Bilbao example is interesting but precisely because it is different due to their informal rules on who they do or don't sign based on if they are Basque or have learned their football from a Basque club. 

If we want success we need a developed identity of the football we want to play at the club and we need to scout players who fit that identity and ethic of the team. This needs to be consistent and appointments from the academy to the top of the club need to reflect this and be integrated into the same vision. The same with the scouts, a lot of the problem with the scouting isn't that we've brought bad players but oftentimes the players don't fill the gaps in the jigsaw that need to be filled. There needs to be an homogeneity of style, ethic, and attitude across the club to make it work from top to bottom.  The club needs to ditch its fascination with celebrity ex footballers and appoint the manager and coaches who can best fit the ideology of football the club sets out and can prove they've achieved success with it.
If we do all these things then we don't need to take a massive punt on Derby county having its own class of 92 steering us to promotion and success. 

I think the biggest problem with investing so heavily in the academy is that it's so unpredictable. There's no guarantee that the next crop will be any good.
Contrast that with investing heavily in setting up a Brentford-style recruitment system; you know the talent is always going to be out there and it's just a case of making the right decision on who to sign. Obviously that's easier said than done, mind.

The issue is that as soon as statements are made like that, whether it be a vision or a misson goal, then they quite rightly are taken literally - why else would you not? Again I think Mel Morris has been guilty of making bold statements with the best intentions which unfortunately ultimately he will and should be measured against. Not as a stick to beat him with but as an indicator of his success in his role - would be the same for any MD of any company coming in whom maps out their three year, five year plan etc. If its not delivered on then quite rightly questions are then asked. Of course Morris doesn't have any shareholders per se to answer to but he does have the club supporters.
But to agree with some of the other comments made am not sure exactly how realistic this statement was in the first instance but can't fault the guy for having grandiose ambitions.

I was thinking of posting exactly the same thing. Our very best young academy prospects (delap and Gordon) get sold. Many of the rest don’t make the grade. You are left with the middling players that COULD become great. But mostly will end up in the championship or lower. Is it really a mode that is sustainable?
But, then you get the occasional player that we can sell for a few quid and pay the wages for another period of time. Whether that’s Bogle and Lowe (wages for a year or so??) or Whittaker (wages for a month??).
But you need basically one a year to help pay the wages, which isn’t realistic. 
 
in summary, I struggle to see this as a sustainable business model, and I don’t see it as a way to get into the prem. unless we get very very lucky.
I would add how many of our academy players right now our championship standard?
I would say two.
and how many could be in the next two years ...
I would say two maybe three.
This strategy just doesn’t work, which I find really quite sad.

Could be a little controversial but I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on the current academy model. 
Here are mine:
Back in ~2015 Mel made the statement that he wanted around half of the first team to be made up on academy players within 5 years. Here we are at that point and that hasnt seemed to materialise. I can understand the model given our continuous failure in the transfer market and heavy investment in the academy. Develop younger and sell on for profit makes sense, bringing through player with 'the Derby way' who can slot into the first team, offer the best prospects in the country an easy path into championship level football to attract the best. However I am sceptical whether this can happen in reality. 
I cant think of another club in world football that has half their team made up of academy players and still remain competitive (maybe Athletic Bilbao?). 
If the model is also to sell the academy players when they can command a fee, which is seems to be the case (bogle, lowe, whittaker) then how can we be competitive while also selling the best our academy produces? We would probably need to be churning out a Will Hughes or Bogle in half of the positions in the team every 3/4 years if promotion/the premier league is still the end goal. I dont think we can sell players and replace them at that rate. 
I also dont think that we are able to bring in the best the country has to offer, and when we do have them, the bigger academies can still poach them for pennies (Kellan Gordon). 
This certainly isnt an academy bashing post either, I think the young lads have done really well under the circumstances this season, but I think too much has been asked of them before they are really ready. 
Do we need to have a bit of a rethink if there is a change in ownership? 

Interesting thoughts.
I would argue we do currently have half the team of academy players, the problem is they aren't good enough as a collective.
To achieve this you would need to churn out at least 5 or 6 players every couple of years that are of championship standard and hope we keep them all.
Any academy would be lucky to produce one or 2 that are capable of staying the course in the championship in a decent team, every few years. 
All young players develop at a different rate and most will never make the grade.
I personally think that if you want to be successful you should intergrade one maybe 2 academy players at a time not 5or 6 9unless they are Will Hughes standard or above)

Could be a little controversial but I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on the current academy model. 
Here are mine:
Back in ~2015 Mel made the statement that he wanted around half of the first team to be made up on academy players within 5 years. Here we are at that point and that hasnt seemed to materialise. I can understand the model given our continuous failure in the transfer market and heavy investment in the academy. Develop younger and sell on for profit makes sense, bringing through player with 'the Derby way' who can slot into the first team, offer the best prospects in the country an easy path into championship level football to attract the best. However I am sceptical whether this can happen in reality. 
I cant think of another club in world football that has half their team made up of academy players and still remain competitive (maybe Athletic Bilbao?). 
If the model is also to sell the academy players when they can command a fee, which is seems to be the case (bogle, lowe, whittaker) then how can we be competitive while also selling the best our academy produces? We would probably need to be churning out a Will Hughes or Bogle in half of the positions in the team every 3/4 years if promotion/the premier league is still the end goal. I dont think we can sell players and replace them at that rate. 
I also dont think that we are able to bring in the best the country has to offer, and when we do have them, the bigger academies can still poach them for pennies (Kellan Gordon). 
This certainly isnt an academy bashing post either, I think the young lads have done really well under the circumstances this season, but I think too much has been asked of them before they are really ready. 
Do we need to have a bit of a rethink if there is a change in ownership? 

I don’t know how many appearances were as a sub but, didn’t he score just 5 goals in 31 games last season and 16 over 66 games for the last two season combined? If so, hardly prolific.