My conspiracy theory is that the news that we had bids in for Graham and Hooper was timed perfectly with the on average 10% price rise of the season ticket....... Carrow Road PR genius at work or not make your own mind up
Interesting that the club are in a position to shell out £5m plus significant wages but are still asking for a £19 "donation" to support the academy from the season ticket take. everyone wants the acadamy to be a roaring success but putting season ticket pirces up AND asking for more cash does smack of taking the proverbial somewhat.
ah, i think you've totally missed the point of the 'donations' thing. remember, the club have lost money from FONCY disbanding and as we now have a category one academy to pay for, we still need to find the cash to pay for that and FONCY were a great help to the club over the years. this 'donation' would make up for that shortfall and more. obviously some will 'opt out' but if all 22k donated, it'd raise more than £400k for the academy. it'll cost £2.7m to run the academy in its first year so that'd be a great start. much rather that than the club ringing me begging for money which has been the case during the last year or so!
Would like to point out I am happy with the season ticket rise at 27 pound a game, especially when my friend a super member pays anywhere from 35 to 55 pound a game to watch the same match as me.
crikey this is NCFC not the CIA i dont like it I cant really afford it but have to expect to pay a higher price for a better product Mini (L1) v RR (PL)
FONCY disbanded in part because they were no longer needed, they were making minimal contribution from the article I read when they broke up. I may be wrong but I don't think they raised more than 400 thou throughout the entire time they existed. Presently, I am a bit dubious as to whether the academy is going to work. It will only work if the people in charge know what they are doing and I don't think there are even very many in the entire country who do. Are we following an FA blueprint? I would rather the money be spent importing young players from abroad.
you misunderstand what i'm saying. FONCY in 2010-11 (don't know last seasons figures) raised more than £200k. that is small fry in this day and age but its still a shortfall that needs covering, so why not try and make a bit more out of it? it works out at an extra £1 a game, so its not exactly breaking anyones piggy bank but as its an optional, i don't see too much harm in the concept. what i do think the club have done wrong is that its 'opt out' rather than 'opt in'. we won't know if the academy system will work for about 6-8 years - that's just the way it is. gut feeling is there will be little change at the top of the game but the smaller clubs might end up with some cracking rough gems which get released from the top flight. as for your idea of buying young foreign talent, i have to say that is the worst idea i've ever heard. that is precisely the sort of thing we want to be discouraging!
i realise that, but the whole point of the amendments to the academy system is to produce better british talent! if we then import a host of foreign kids, it excludes our own players, so there would definitely be no point in changing the system then!! by bringing in better coaches, the standard will inevitably go up, so that's a good start but there are so many things we get wrong at youth level in this country that it will take a very long time for things to look up. but, within a decade i would say we should be seeing some signs of encouragement on the international front. i doubt we'll win a world cup or euros but i do think we'll start to see better touch and technique in our kids
An argument I've heard is that because the focus in Britain is on winning, we fail to develop ball skills in youngsters, because at a youth level physical attributes win out. I don't know what age the academy start playing competitive games, but I'd almost like to see us withdraw them from leagues until they're 16, so they spend more time working on ball skills, and things that are important long term.
quite right, but the 'focus on winning' should not be forgotten. it just shouldn't be thrust upon kids between the ages of 8 and 12!
I think you will be looking more at 20 years until real quality starts being produced, it will take 10 years to get the coaches and fans up to scratch. We are miles behind.
you could be right carrabuh. i went for the most optimistic outlook! either way, something needed to be done and it has. i think some success will come of it, maybe it won't be the massive success we all hope it will, but there will be an improvement of some kind and that can only be a good thing. we are certainly a long way back from where we could have been if we'd followed clairefontaine back in 2000 when it was mooted, but even then, you look at the french and they've had setbacks with that system. there is no right way to do this so lets see how the 'english twist' pays off
