Could be wrong here, I wasn't there so difficult to say with any clarity. But my experience of events" such as this the Directors put forward to do these talks tend tp talk a lot, but say very little. They have to keep the party line and not deviate from what Donald wants people to hear. As I say, I wasn't there, so I might be very wrong
i'd read the BLC summary first, which was very brief, so I was hoping RAWA would have a lot more details, but no, same summary really. I'm surprised that took 4 hours. Hopefully something to build on, but I expect the club to make a positive move this week, just to show they've listened.
Thought this was fair. I reckon the academy is failing so badly that Donald will scale it back over the next 12 months.
The other thing to consider with this is why absorb such high running costs at the minute. Would that money not be better spent getting us out of league one. I'm sure it could always return to a Cat 1 in the future if it was downgraded in the short term?
I'm sure you're right, it can only be the facilities that make it CAT 1, because we certainly don't churn out any kind of successful teams from it. Promotion has to be everything in the short term, the rest can wait.
There's also the argument of playing against other Cat 1 teams at the minute. Were basically doing their scouting. They suddenly see we have a better player in a certain position than they do and all of a sudden money is no object and they turn the players and families heads. We need to get better at the pathway for youth to the first team. Southampton did it when they hit the level we are at now. We've never been able to due to constantly battling relegation and looking for the new manager bounce.
There is an interesting argument about academies and whether they are sustainable at a lower level Really interesting article from Brentford where they ditched their academy for a different model https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/05/brentford-ditched-their-academy-premier-league-outcasts#:~:text=Almost a year on since,is the reality for Brentford. My problem is I don't think our current owners and CEO are clever or forward thinking enough to come up with something progressive as this I can see the academy being cut back and even moth balled unfortunately I can't see them using the money to invest in the first team It will just be another one of his cuts to save money. They've cut the club back to the bone saved a lot of money haven't seen any of it invested so far
