The academy model

[angieram]

3 minutes ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

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? 

And the answer is, it appears to be the one aspect of the club that is working. ?

How can it be the future of the club if it isn't working? You can't rip it up cos we're broke and reinstate it in a couple of years.

[RoyMac5]

16 minutes ago, angieram said:

I am finding this thread a bit depressing, tbh. 

One of the brightest, no the brightest, parts of our club under Mel's tenure has been the sustained development of our academy and younger players. I think credit goes to the entire team from Mel's investment through Darren Wassall's excellent stewardship and all the coaching and education teams behind our young players. They are almost without exception such rounded young sportsmen who know how to play the game in the right spirit.

I actually take a certain amount of pride in our academy concept and am pleased we have decided to nurture future talent rather than just leaving it to the "big" clubs.

At the very best not having an academy would have given us the money to buy one more Waghorn type player a year, who wouldn't be allowable against FFP, and would give no more guarantee of a return against investment than our current set up. 

But success is everything, so let's rip up all that investment in the future of the game, make several dozen staff redundant and use the money to employ analysts who will buy in a random assortment of strangers that aren’t allowable against FFP and who have no association with our club. What makes you think that would work better? 

Ah, yes, Brentford. Anyone would think they'd just got promoted ( at last.)

Just a final thought. Moor Farm provides some of the very best training facilities in the whole country, which benefits all our teams. We wouldn't be able to afford to keep that going for the first team squad only. No academy, no Moor Farm. 

This.

Football's coming home...

He's one of our own...

#COYR

 

[Angry Ram]

1 hour ago, Ghost of Clough said:

In terms of investment vs player sales, we've broken even during Mel's time as owner, but we still own a talented group of youngsters as well. So at the very least it's not a waste.

Then there is the undeniable fact that it's helped us avoid P&S punishments thanks to those player sales. 

And perhaps the most important one of all, academy player sales over the past 12 months have kept this club running - Bogle, Lowe, Whittaker, Gordon, the Man Utd 5...

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.

[Jram]

I think the current generation have a very good chance of blooming into exceptional players given the success their counterparts at other clubs have had, who they regularly beat at youth level e.g saka, willock 

Bird, Sibley, Buchanan and Knight are still so young, so much time to vastly improve 

Even with these lads being integral first team players, the U23s still had an excellent season

I really think it is feasible that we will be quite good in a couple of years with these players improving... that or we sell them for money and save the club which would be just as satisfactory an outcome if it means we survive as a club

[Carnero]

1 hour ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

But if they’re irrelevant to FFP, are they not irrelevant to our current financial struggles, which are FFP-based?

In fact rather than being irrelevant the academy has massively helped the FFP/P&S position we find ourselves in, whilst the costs of running the academy can be excluded the sales of academy players do count (basically as pure profit, save for signing on fees/agent fees). Without the sales of the likes of Hendrick, Hughes, Lowe, Bogle & Whittaker our finances for FFP/P&S purposes would be in a far bigger mess.

[Spanish]

41 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

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.

Swiss Ramble estimates them at £5m pa.

[RoyMac5]

12 minutes ago, Spanish said:

Swiss Ramble estimates them at £5m pa.

Is that just the cost of staff and players, or does it include the running of the training facilities too?

[MackworthRamIsGod]

1 hour ago, angieram said:

And the answer is, it appears to be the one aspect of the club that is working. ?

How can it be the future of the club if it isn't working? You can't rip it up cos we're broke and reinstate it in a couple of years.

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.

Edited June 9, 2021 by MackworthRamIsGod

[TheAllestreeRam]

1 hour ago, angieram said:

And the answer is, it appears to be the one aspect of the club that is working. ?

How can it be the future of the club if it isn't working? You can't rip it up cos we're broke and reinstate it in a couple of years.

You could then make the argument that if the academy is working (which I agree with), and we are still in a very deep mess, that the model isnt sufficient? 

I think the academy development has gone about as well as it reasonably could, however where we are now is with a crop of players who have neither commanded enough transfer fees to sort out our financial situation, nor given us a playing squad that has enough quality. 

Of course this could change in the future, but if we are going to sell knight and bird for example, do we think we could replace them with a player of equal quality almost immediately? Or do we sit in a constant cycle of waiting for players to become good enough before shipping them on while results suffer? 

This wasnt intended to be depressing, I think its okay to question whether the plan is working looking at the current state of the club as a whole. Imagine how good it would be with the academy we have, and we also finally sorted our the dire recruitment... at the moment the academy seems like the answer to all of our problems. 

[Jram]

8 minutes ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

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.

The thing is though, promoting the academy lads is the only option we’ve got and I think people are saying “imagine how horrific it would be if we didn’t even have the academy”... I completely agree it isnt ideal to promote 4 or 5 at the same time (although I do think they will become really good players soon) but we’d be completely done if we didn’t have that option (if we’re not already completely done)

[TheAllestreeRam]

5 minutes ago, Jram said:

The thing is though, promoting the academy lads is the only option we’ve got and I think people are saying “imagine how horrific it would be if we didn’t even have the academy”... I completely agree it isnt ideal to promote 4 or 5 at the same time (although I do think they will become really good players soon) but we’d be completely done if we didn’t have that option (if we’re not already completely done)

We would be in a far worse position without the academy granted, but i ask the question whether leaning on the academy in this way was the plan all along and we are seeing the results of that? Asking too much too soon of many youngsters. 

[Spanish]

28 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Is that just the cost of staff and players, or does it include the running of the training facilities too?

no idea sorry, he is normally quite thorough and anything he includes is likely to be correct if it is excluded from P&S.  Maybe the place to look is in the EFL rules on what is allowable

[Spanish]

2 minutes ago, TheAllestreeRam said:

We would be in a far worse position without the academy granted, but i ask the question whether leaning on the academy in this way was the plan all along and we are seeing the results of that? Asking too much too soon of many youngsters. 

only if the plan included being on the edge of relegation.

[Ghost of Clough]

1 hour ago, Angry Ram said:

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?

£6m to run the academy each year if the academy accounts are to be believed (16/17 and 17/18). It was about £2m when he took over, so the total over the 7 years will be roughly £34m
Ignoring nominal fees such as Hanson, we've sold Hendrick, Hughes, Bogle, Lowe, Whittaker, Delap, Gordon, ManUtd3 for an estimated £31m. Luke Thomas may have counted as an academy signing which adds another £1.2m to the total.

1 hour ago, Angry Ram said:

To save a club financially or build a future.. I am sure the Morris vision was the latter.

Both. Saved the club when needed (Bogle, Lowe, Whittaker, Gordon, MU3). But, also building for the future (Buchanan, Bird, Knight, Sibley, Ebosele, Stretton, etc...)

1 hour ago, Angry Ram said:

@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.

Under P&S it isn't £6m on the academy or £6m on a player. Academy spend is exempt from P&S calculations so has no bearing on first team spend. There is nothing to say we can't spend £6m a year on the academy, AND £6m on a first team player (Bielik for example)

[Ghost of Clough]

14 minutes ago, Spanish said:

no idea sorry, he is normally quite thorough and anything he includes is likely to be correct if it is excluded from P&S.  Maybe the place to look is in the EFL rules on what is allowable

FYI, total group exclusions are actually about £7m.

Swiss Ramblur plucks a number out of the air for his estimated P&S exclusions

[BondJovi]

I have no issue with the plan as such. I don't really enjoy much of football currently, so the idea that we would have a set of young players to support and watch grow was great.

But you can't suddenly decide to take this path then scrap the man trusted to do it after a season and a bit. Based on what these players have shown (under Cocu) I would have no issue with our team starting with Buchanan, Knight, Bird and Sibley. They aren't the problem, that belongs to the under performing senior players. 

I don't believe the senior players were fully on board with Cocu, but due to our own ineptitude off the pitch he could do little about it. I think they gave more for Rooney but the younger players suffered.

It is a shame that at the point we decide to fully use the academy and youngsters, we have the worst set of senior players for at least 8 seasons.

Our best asset is the academy, we had the ideal manager for that. We panicked when it got rough, we put a manager in place to sell the club. And now we are in a situation where we will have to rely on the young players even more with a manager who has shown little understanding of getting the best from them.

There was no clear vision on how to use the academy, just a faint dream. We stumbled on a plan but did our best to give it no chance of success.

Sadly I don't believe we will even get the money we should when we inevitably sell one of them.

 

[Premier ram]

Watson , Ebosele and Stretton , these 3 give me hope for the future of our club , stars in the making

[Spanish]

4 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

FYI, total group exclusions are actually about £7m.

Swiss Ramblur plucks a number out of the air for his estimated P&S exclusions

so you don't rate his work?  Ramblur is of course not the same guy

[Sparkle]

5 hours ago, LondonRam2 said:

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!

All good points - and worth remembering that Jamie Vardy was released by Sheffield Wednesday and had to work his way up in a fantastic Roy of the Rovers way 

[AutoWindscreens]

2 hours ago, angieram said:

I am finding this thread a bit depressing, tbh. 

One of the brightest, no the brightest, parts of our club under Mel's tenure has been the sustained development of our academy and younger players. I think credit goes to the entire team from Mel's investment through Darren Wassall's excellent stewardship and all the coaching and education teams behind our young players. They are almost without exception such rounded young sportsmen who know how to play the game in the right spirit.

I actually take a certain amount of pride in our academy concept and am pleased we have decided to nurture future talent rather than just leaving it to the "big" clubs.

At the very best not having an academy would have given us the money to buy one more Waghorn type player a year, who wouldn't be allowable against FFP, and would give no more guarantee of a return against investment than our current set up. 

But success is everything, so let's rip up all that investment in the future of the game, make several dozen staff redundant and use the money to employ analysts who will buy in a random assortment of strangers that aren’t allowable against FFP and who have no association with our club. What makes you think that would work better? 

Ah, yes, Brentford. Anyone would think they'd just got promoted ( at last.)

Just a final thought. Moor Farm provides some of the very best training facilities in the whole country, which benefits all our teams. We wouldn't be able to afford to keep that going for the first team squad only. No academy, no Moor Farm. 

 

Plus: the Brentford model is now cast in serious doubt by Brexit and the need for work permits. If you find an undiscovered gem in an unsung European club he probably won't have the points for a permit.