Darren Wassall has left the club

[Rev]

48 minutes ago, therealhantsram said:

Good shout.

I'd like to see us hire someone like the assistant manager from the Forest academy.sSeems they are doing something right

 

Rumours in Nottingham that they'll be firing their academy boss shortly.

[i-Ram]

15 hours ago, Mihangel said:

Anyway, best of luck to Derren Walsall, he's been a great servant.

 

[jimtastic56]

5 hours ago, Rev said:

Rumours in Nottingham that they'll be firing their academy boss shortly.

And appointing Wassall ? With 3 academy lads playing for them in the Premiership, there is a path to play in the worlds top league. They should be able to cherry-pick some of the best young lads in the country.

[Wolfie20]

5 hours ago, Rev said:

Rumours in Nottingham that they'll be setting fire to their academy shortly - insurance job?

FTFY

[alram]

maybe an unpopular opinion but when you look at the overall output of the cat 1 academy it has been slightly underwhelming from our point of view and the amount of money that would have been pumped into it, not sure we would have got anything close to a return even though we had pick of the action in our catchment area. how did we let players like brennan johnson slip through the radar when we were cat 1? 

 

how many premier league players have we realistically produced? will hughes?

 

i would be happy if we moved to a B team model

Edited May 25, 2023 by alram

[Rev]

1 hour ago, jimtastic56 said:

And appointing Wassall ? With 3 academy lads playing for them in the Premiership, there is a path to play in the worlds top league. They should be able to cherry-pick some of the best young lads in the country.

I don't know anything recent about Wassall, but there's rumours from the Forest fans that Brazil will be pushed out.

For what reason, I know not?

 

[vonwright]

Has any lower league club made a 'prioritise the academy' model work? Either in terms of achieving success on the pitch or making serious £££s on several players (not just one jackpot player)? 

It's an expensive business and your best talents can still get picked off on the cheap when very young (eg Gordon, Williams, Delap).

We put in a load of money over multiple seasons (cheers Mel...) and had youngsters who were dominant in age-group football but none of them has either made us a ton of money or looked properly Premier League-grade.

[RoyMac5]

11 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Has any lower league club made a 'prioritise the academy' model work? Either in terms of achieving success on the pitch or making serious £££s on several players (not just one jackpot player)? 

It's an expensive business and your best talents can still get picked off on the cheap when very young (eg Gordon, Williams, Delap).

We put in a load of money over multiple seasons (cheers Mel...) and had youngsters who were dominant in age-group football but none of them has either made us a ton of money or looked properly Premier League-grade.

Why do we have a football club?

Perhaps that is also one of the reasons for an Academy?

Has anyone ( @Ghost of Clough?) done a vague costing over the past decade or so. 

[vonwright]

5 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Why do we have a football club?

Perhaps that is also one of the reasons for an Academy?

Has anyone ( @Ghost of Clough?) done a vague costing over the past decade or so. 

Yeah I'm not saying don't have one - but under Morris we spent a lot of money on it for no obvious return. (It was widely quoted he has spent £30m on the academy; not sure what that included.)

I'm just curious whether a Morris-like model has ever worked. As far as I can tell, most of the teams promoted from the Championship/League One don't tend to be full of academy products. 

[Ghost of Clough]

3 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Yeah I'm not saying don't have one - but under Morris we spent a lot of money on it for no obvious return. (It was widely quoted he has spent £30m on the academy; not sure what that included.)

I'm just curious whether a Morris-like model has ever worked. As far as I can tell, most of the teams promoted from the Championship/League One don't tend to be full of academy products. 

Using your £30m figure, that would average out at £4.3m between him taking over (2014) and him jumping ship (2021). If we kept up at that level of spending during administration and this season (we didn't) that would take the total to £38.6m.

Since 2014,  we have sold the following academy graduates for a fee: Hendrick (£10m), Hughes (£4m), Thomas (£1.2m), Bogle and Lowe (£8m), Plange (£1m), Gordon (£1m), Delap (£1m), Williams (£500k), Ryan, Kaba, Scanlon, Sharpe (£2m), plus nominal fees for Bennett, Hanson, and a few others). In total, that's just shy of £30m. It would have been higher if we were allowed to function like a normal club over the past 4 years by selling academy players and reinvesting that money into the squad.
However, we weren't allowed to sign anyone, meaning we couldn't afford to sell players due to squad size. We weren't even allowed to give academy players time on the pitch as it would have resulted in being unable to sign players, or even give extensions to existing players, resulting in us releasing youngsters.

[vonwright]

59 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Using your £30m figure, that would average out at £4.3m between him taking over (2014) and him jumping ship (2021). If we kept up at that level of spending during administration and this season (we didn't) that would take the total to £38.6m.

Since 2014,  we have sold the following academy graduates for a fee: Hendrick (£10m), Hughes (£4m), Thomas (£1.2m), Bogle and Lowe (£8m), Plange (£1m), Gordon (£1m), Delap (£1m), Williams (£500k), Ryan, Kaba, Scanlon, Sharpe (£2m), plus nominal fees for Bennett, Hanson, and a few others). In total, that's just shy of £30m. It would have been higher if we were allowed to function like a normal club over the past 4 years by selling academy players and reinvesting that money into the squad.
However, we weren't allowed to sign anyone, meaning we couldn't afford to sell players due to squad size. We weren't even allowed to give academy players time on the pitch as it would have resulted in being unable to sign players, or even give extensions to existing players, resulting in us releasing youngsters.

Can we count Hendrick and Hughes? Both were here well before 2014 which was when Morris arrived (and also when we got category 1 status). Not sure the fees for either are returns on Morris' £30m.

(On the other hand you could argue any fees we get for Sibley, Knight, Bird and Cashin could be included.)

[IlsonDerby]

Don’t blame Wassall for the Rotherham game. 
Made changes at 3-0 up. A side pushing for play offs, 3-0 up against relegation fodder. Think he can be forgiven for thinking it was safe to freshen up and rest a few important players. 
 

[Ghost of Clough]

8 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Can we count Hendrick and Hughes? Both were here well before 2014 which was when Morris arrived (and also when we got category 1 status). Not sure the fees for either are returns on Morris' £30m.

(On the other hand you could argue any fees we get for Sibley, Knight, Bird and Cashin could be included.)

You either count those who were here before and sold during, or include those who are still at the club and haven't been sold yet (estimating their values)

[vonwright]

9 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Can we count Hendrick and Hughes? Both were here well before 2014 which was when Morris arrived (and also when we got category 1 status). Not sure the fees for either are returns on Morris' £30m.

(On the other hand you could argue any fees we get for Sibley, Knight, Bird and Cashin could be included.)

Just to be clear I'm not saying we were wrong to invest in the academy or that it wasn't a great thing to have. On the contrary: watching our younger players disappear and all that work come to nothing was one of the most wretched things about the Morris collapse. 

I'm just wondering about it as a business decision at Champ/League One level. Which clubs were we looking at when we decided to do it? Who were we pointing at and saying 'We want to be like them'?

[vonwright]

2 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

You either count those who were here before and sold during, or include those who are still at the club and haven't been sold yet (estimating their values)

You do the latter, I think. Perhaps those left are worth £14m but I think that's a very generous valuation. 

(Maybe you could argue that the players left, plus the value we might have achieved on Ebosele & Ebiowei if we hadn't been a basket case, might get you to Hughes + Hendrick and therefore something like break-even.)

[May Contain Nuts]

21 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

Don’t blame Wassall for the Rotherham game. 
Made changes at 3-0 up. A side pushing for play offs, 3-0 up against relegation fodder. Think he can be forgiven for thinking it was safe to freshen up and rest a few important players. 
 

I think you can rightfully blame him for it. What seems to escape most people though is that, just because you hold him to account for it, you don't have to let it form a grudge against him in your mind to be repeatedly brought up as evidence hat he was out of his depth.

However, it was obvious to all and sundry and had been for some time that the key to us doing anything successfully was having a hold-up striker up top, and/or a competent defensive midfielder in the side (or just one who could provide a bit of control in possession), as it had been shown before just how utterly piss weak and prone to collapse our defence was when put under almost any sort of pressure.

Taking Martin and Thorne off to give them a rest, OK. Putting Darren Bent & Nick Blackman on when we had Butterfield & Hanson sat on the bench? Nah. He completely through away any control we had and  it invited them onto us.

Oh and Rotherham had won 3 in a row before the game under Warnock, with Wassall saying that we'd have taken  with a point before the game given their form. (They went on to win 3 of their next 4 - staying up by 9 points)

Edited May 25, 2023 by Kokosnuss

[jimtastic56]

Mel claimed to have lost £180 million on DCFC. He said he spent £30 million on the academy . But was he counting the facilities that the 1st team could use as well, such as pitches , gym equipment etc?Mel had his own way of sorting his accounts.

[angieram]

2 hours ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Using your £30m figure, that would average out at £4.3m between him taking over (2014) and him jumping ship (2021). If we kept up at that level of spending during administration and this season (we didn't) that would take the total to £38.6m.

Since 2014,  we have sold the following academy graduates for a fee: Hendrick (£10m), Hughes (£4m), Thomas (£1.2m), Bogle and Lowe (£8m), Plange (£1m), Gordon (£1m), Delap (£1m), Williams (£500k), Ryan, Kaba, Scanlon, Sharpe (£2m), plus nominal fees for Bennett, Hanson, and a few others). In total, that's just shy of £30m. It would have been higher if we were allowed to function like a normal club over the past 4 years by selling academy players and reinvesting that money into the squad.
However, we weren't allowed to sign anyone, meaning we couldn't afford to sell players due to squad size. We weren't even allowed to give academy players time on the pitch as it would have resulted in being unable to sign players, or even give extensions to existing players, resulting in us releasing youngsters.

I think these figures are excellent but only go so far to demonstrate  the value of the academy.

This is because you also have to factor in every minute any of those players have played for the first team, where we have saved having to buy someone else in to do their job. 

Hughes and Hendrick nearly got us promoted, Bogle likewise and the value of those young lads who have kept us going on the pitch these last two seasons has been tremendous.

I know we pay them a wage, but it will probably have been modest by comparison to bought players.

[angieram]

28 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

Mel claimed to have lost £180 million on DCFC. He said he spent £30 million on the academy . But was he counting the facilities that the 1st team could use as well, such as pitches , gym equipment etc?Mel had his own way of sorting his accounts.

That's a good point, too. It's hard to separate those things out. I am sure they must use a formula for the accounts, as I think one counts against FFP, the other doesn't? 

[europia]

Reality is that DCFC is in the third tier of English football, and Mr Clowes has eluded to the fact that the club has to live within its means.