Our academy has produced several football league players these last few years; Nicky Featherstone (Hull City, Hartlepool - now non-league) Mark Cullen (Hull City, Port Vale) Will Atkinson (Hull City, Bradford, Mansfield) Rory Watson (Scunthorpe) Will Aimson (Plymouth) (though I think we bought him from Eastbourne) Harvey Rodgers (Accrington) Sonny Bradley (Hull City, Luton) Mark Oxley (Hull City, Southend) Tom Cairney (Hull City, Fulham) Jamie Devitt (Hull City, Carlisle, Barrow) Liam Cooper (Hull City, Leeds) Conor Townsend (WBA) Josh Tymon (Hull City, Stoke) Daniel James (Swansea, Man U) Jarrod Bowen (Hull City, West Ham) Max Clark (Hull City) Jacob Greaves (Hull City) Keane Lewis-Potter (Hull City) Dan Batty (Hull City, Fleetwood) Robbie McKenzie (Hull City, Gillingham) Brandon Fleming (Hull City) Billy Chadwick (Hull City) Max Sheaf (Hull City, Cheltenham Town) I'd say most of those came through our academy when it was category three, which still isn't bad going. Granted, most of them left for nothing, but it shows that you can produce decent enough professional footballers without a category one academy. That being said, there's been an obvious step up in talent coming through (owing in part to the division we're in) and that can only be a good thing. Even those that come out of the likes of Man U and Chelsea sometimes drop into non-league, pedigree is no guarantee.
I was talking about training facilities, not just the youth academy. Plus I don't think you get an immediate upgrade in category anyway, from memory it takes time. I also believe we are only cat 2 are we not? However, portakabins not including the youth academy against a brand new full service facility. At the same time Burnley has made it's own investment rather than renting Bishop Burton and kicking community organisations out of the Arco for the youth academy to get cat 2. Which do you think is more impressive and good use of some of the Premier League money, as regardless of the strides the youth system has made, they still don't have a permanent home, an asset of the club. In fact the club basically doesn't have any assets other than the players and the Cottingham 3rd rate facility.
Let's be fair, in regards to a purpose build training ground... Sir Adam should have done it Duffman should have done it Allams should have done it All 3 owners made improvements, but none did what should have been done and what is desperately needed to bring us inline with other teams
The allams took over when we were in dire straits You understand that don’t you? 30 odd million debt when they Took over. Burley went up in 2009 whenever and don’t spend a penny You understand the difference? No debt So you wanted them to spend on the academy straight away rather than rescue the team? oh ok
Geo - I wonder if the £16m of debt in the SMC accounts is the stumbling block and has been in the past. Would the selling price quoted in the past include this? Anyone know?
Burnley weren't even in the Premier League when they decided to build their state of the art training facilities. They announced the plans in 2014, got planning in 2015 and opened them in 2017. They've quite obviously done a better job of it than we have. You can make a decent case for all three of Pearson, Duffen and the Allams having fallen short with regard to infrastructure improvements. In Pearson's case he had a lot less money to play with, in Duffen's case we'd gone up for the first time ever and he wanted to try and keep us there (he was also far more interested in chasing daft targets like Negrado, than long term investment), but the Allams have had half a billion pounds come through the coffers, they really have no excuse at all.
Ridiculous sun to bandy about Take away player wages out of that. mans agoan the point being Burnley had no debt when they first went up and no debt when they went down When the allams came in we were on the point of liquidation
Burnley had debt when they went up, they just used the 2014/15 Premier League money to pay it all off, along with allocating part to fund the new training facility. They took the decision that paying of the debt and improving the club infrastructure, was more important than staying in the Premier League and as a consequence set their wage bill at less than £30m (the next lowest wage bill in the Premier League that season was just under £60m).
No, though I don't believe we were ever going to be liquidated either (we were obviously in serious trouble, but there's no way we'd have ceased to exist).
Who was going to bail us out then ? Seem to recall at the time that the choice was either pay up or start the following season with a huge points deduction ?