http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sp...League_accepts_Elite_Player_Performance_Plan/ small teams getting ****ed over again
This is just plain wrong , greedy prem clubs looking after themselves , is this the price for prem handouts to the football league?
followed up by this http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/9318468.How_today_s_important_vote_will_affect_Watford_FC/
Britain would be a better place if the 46 Football League chairman who voted for this were chased out of football at least, ideally the country. They have today admitted either that their clubs do **** all in terms of youth development, or that their clubs are so badly run that they will go under without the piss poor pittance that the Premier League donates for the priviledge of taking players from clubs with high success rates and good reputations for helping out lads who weren't good enough, and turning 95% of them into NEETs. EDIT: Wow, that was a long sentence! However, this isn't as clear-cut bad news for Watford as I initially felt it would be. The 90-minute rule being scrapped does not hurt us in any way, because Watford is 90 minutes from every professional club in London. It would also have prevented us from signing the likes of Robert Page and Pat Jennings if it was around in their day. Secondly, it's patently obvious that once this system is in place, compensation will over time be much more heavily skewed towards the top academies. That will almost certainly be to our benefit. The day that the Premier League introduces a system that designates Harefield as anything other than a top level academy is the day that Gianluca Vialli and Mark Ashton's lawyers are welcomed back to Vicarage Road with open arms.
Do you have an expression "Turkeys voting for Christmas". If you do not this is just the time to use it.
I put my thoughts on the short news item about this, but an Intersting blog on the BBC on this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/10/football_league_votes_in_favou.html#299200 The guy also says: "Just spoken to an academy director who attended the meeting today. His conclusion: "This has changed youth development for good." Apparently there was a two-hour debate during which a lot of excellent points were made. Basically, whether a club voted yes or no boiled down to the quality of their youth systems. If they had a good youth system and regularly brought through their own players they voted no. If they do not, they voted yes as they want the extra money on offer. Hence the likes of Ipswich, Burnley, Crystal Palace, Reading and Watford all voted no" Great to see we said no While we can ourselves pick up youngsters on the cheap from 'lesser' academies, in lower divisions, it also means the great work we do with our own can mean ultimately very little. You just hope the youngsters realise that our Academy is the best palce for them... but if the bigger teams start adopting the same strategy as ours, it will be hard to differentiate the difference, so our big 'selling point' would be a much better chance of first team football (which our youngsters aren't getting as much at the moment)
