According to this

[Stimacked]

The idea of following the Fair Play Rules and developing a squad at a sustainable wage and including plenty of home grown players in it sounded great until I read this....

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/15381652.stm]http://news.bbc.co.u...ll/15381652.stm

Peterborough director Barry Fry says Football League clubs could close their youth academies when a new compensation system is introduced.

The 72 Football League clubs voted on Thursday to accept radical proposals to overhaul the academy system.

They had been told by the Premier League they would lose funding if they opted against them.

"What frightens me is that a lot of clubs will pull out of having a youth system altogether," said Fry.

The vote was won by 46 to 22, with three no-shows and one abstention.

The new system will put an end to the type of deal which saw [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/14689026.stm]West Ham sign Sam Baldock, 22, from MK Dons for £2.5m in August.

The current tribunal system used when the buying and selling club cannot agree a fee for the transfer of a player aged under 17 will be replaced by a set of fixed prices.

The new price tariffs will see a selling club paid £3,000 per year for every year of a player's development between the ages of nine and 11. The fee per year from 12 to 16 will depend on the selling club's academy status but ranges between £12,500 and £40,000.

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If we lose our youth players for nominal fees how are we going to survive?[/indent]

Karl Robinson MK Dons manager

If Football League clubs had voted against the new proposals, the funding they receive annually from the Premier League for youth development - a fee currently in excess of £5m per season - would have been withheld.

BBC Sport understands the Football League had reluctantly advised its members to vote in favour of accepting the Premier League's final offer at Thursday's meeting at the Bescot Stadium in Walsall.

The restructure is tied in with the [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9379053.stm]Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which aims to improve the youth development system. It has already been accepted by top-flight clubs at a vote in June.

And Fry added: "Lower league clubs will look at how much it costs to run their academy or school of excellence and think that, if the Premier League can nick their best players for a low price, what is the point of investing in it?"

Fry estimates the sale of home-grown players such as Luke Steele [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/peterborough_united/1869286.stm]to Manchester United in 2002, plus Matthew Etherington and Simon Davies - both to Tottenham in 2000 - generated Peterborough in the region of £6m.

But he added: "We would not get anything like that under the new system.

"The Premier League wants everything and they want it for nothing. Football League clubs will moan about this at the meeting but vote for it because they have no choice."

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56166000/jpg/_56166136_eth Peterborough received £500,000 for selling Matthew Etherington to Spurs

Milton Keynes Dons this week reportedly agreed a £1.5 fee, rising to £2m, with Chelsea [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2049367/Chelsea-pay-2m-14-year-old-Oluwaseyi-Ojo.html]for 14-year-old Oluwaseyi Ojo.

As well as the sale of Baldock to West Ham, MK Dons have used seven players that have come through their youth ranks in their first team this season.

MK Dons boss Karl Robinson, who is a former member of the Liverpool academy coaching staff, said: "If we lose our youth players for nominal fees how are we going to survive?

"I don't think it is fair. Kids develop at a phenomenal rate at the highest level but are these kids going to play in people's first teams at the age of 16 or 17?"

One academy manager at a Football League club, who asked not to be named, said he feared the new price structure would lead to Premier League clubs "hoovering up the best talent" outside of the top-flight, with the danger it would stunt the development of players who would find their path to first-team football blocked by seasoned professionals.

The Premier League is keen to stress that the new proposals will result in an increased youth development payment for all 92 Premier League and Football League clubs for a guaranteed four-year period.

That money will be gratefully received by Football League clubs due to lost revenue from the [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12965536]latest television deal.

The Premier League is also confident the EPPP will help to produce more top-quality players, potentially strengthening the England team

We are going to get shafted for all our best Academy players and the whole idea Clough has been developing the future of the club around will be in tatters because all our most talented players will be stolen from us at miniscule compensation rates that will mean we cannot keep Moor Farm running for long, if we end up stuck in this leagueand we will be left with tuppance. Think its outrageous that the Premier League have bribed the Football League clubs with some cash, even though its completely against their clubs interests financially. Southampton and Ipswich have gotten huge wads of cash for Wickham and Chamberain? but by the tame Bennett and Thomas are 17 and 18 we would get barely nothing for them ( assuming the unlikely event that we can hang on to them for that long)

Sounds like a total rip off!

[CumbrianRam]