People get too hung up on budgets. It's not whether you've got £10 or £20m to spend, it's how you spend it. How much do you reckon DQPR spent on fees and, more significantly, wages? I'd suggest ****loads more than Swansea.
To secure the long term development and improvement of the clubs infrastructure, we need to stay in the Premier League, so I'd make that the main priority. But I'd certainly put the training facilities ahead of any ground expansion.
A percentage of any clubs finances should be used to develop the clubs long term prospects of growing its own players. Why can't we spend £20M on staying up AND start the ball rolling with staged improvements with the training and academy facilities?
It's got to be the latter for me, buying a training complex doesn't suddenly make the youth players we have awesome, so I'd invest the money in the squad and leave such developments until we are a little more established.
Its no use saying leave until we are established, we need to be doing something now. We are/will be left behind by other clubs in terms of the academy, there are better set ups at a lot of Championship clubs than ours.
Our youth setup is an absolute embarrassment. But then, if you're not going to bother giving chances to the rare gems like Danny Emerton who make it through, what's the point in wasting your money on improving it anyway? People keep telling me that spending £10m on Hooper and Austin would be making the same mistake as we did last time we came up. It wouldn't. Our mistake last time wasn't spending money, it was spending excessive amounts of money (inc. wages) on players who were too old, or, as in Bullard's case, either already injured or prone to injury. Also, we didn't seem to address any particular area of the team - we just spunked cash willy-nilly on random players. None of the players had any sell-on value either. Austin and Hooper are both proven goalscorers. Yes, not in the Premier League, but a natural finisher is a natural finisher regardless of the league they play in. They are 23 and 25 respectively. Say we signed them and came straight back down anyway. Either A) They stay and provide us with some firepower to have a great chance of coming straight back up, or; B) We sell them both, even if it a small loss. It is not the same as spending £3m on some **** like Olofinjana, giving him massive wages and not incorporating some kind of relegation clause into his contract.
This is were the real debate starts, by being successful we are bypassing the youth development. We dont produce the quality that our league standing needs, so we have to buy players to be able to compete at that level. Fans, owners and the media to a certain extent demand instant success, where does that leave our developing youth players? If we dropped down to say League 1, our youth system would still produce players capable of playing in the first team squad as we are now - but they would have a better chance of getting into the first team because we wouldn't have the finances to buy. Crewe have always developed a large majority of players, due to there lack of success they are forced to give the youth a chance. With big numbers of academy players getting time on the pitch, they are always going to develop a small amount of top players. I would like to see a smaller Championship side gain promotion with a big majority of club grown British players, stick to there philosophy in the Prem and not sign anyone, take the cash - and the relegation more than likely, how good would that be? It would be like sticking two fingers up at the whole Prem/Sky gang!!
What is the purpose of the academy structure?How many BPL or top championship teams actually have home grown talent in them.
