BRISTOL CITY BLOG: Club committed to 'grow your own' policy. By a_stockhausen. please log in to view this image Joe Bryan is the latest Bristol City Academy graduate to hold down a place in the first team at Ashton Gate. I have heard it said that more students will gain places at those traditional bastions of university education Oxford and Cambridge this year than will earn professional contracts with Football League clubs. The very fact that our youngsters have more chance of gaining entry into these elite seats of learning than they do of realising their dreams of becoming a professional footballer, says much about the challenges faced by clubs in the modern era and the direction the game has taken. For a vast majority of the 72 clubs that currently occupy the Championship and Leagues One and Two, the challenge is to identify and then nurture home-grown talent to the point where it is ready to go into the first team. Such a pathway offers the only sustainable model for clubs that, for the most part, no longer possess untold riches to lavish on expensive transfer fees and inflated wages. But the pressing need to cut costs and come in line with Financial Fair Play requirements has caused many clubs to operate on a more modest scale and run with smaller squads in recent times. And a growing need for financial prudence has had a knock-on effect further down the line, rendering it more difficult still for teenage scholars to earn senior contracts once they have graduated from club academies at the age of 18. Academies cost money and not every club is prepared to outlay precious resource on schemes that, by their very nature, carry no guarantee of success. Not so at Bristol City, a club that gained Category Two status for its academy only last year and which takes seriously the business of youth development. Proof of just how seriously the Robins take this particular enterprise will be on offer at Ashton Gate this Saturday when eight Academy graduates and their families will be guests for the visit of Doncaster Rovers in League One. Joe Morrell, Connor Lemonheigh-Evans, Marley Bishop, Tom Fry, Zak Vyner, Ben Last, Liam Monelle and Jamie Horgan are the latest batch of young players to have progressed through City’s Academy and earn professional contracts. The players and their families will be the personal guests of chief executive John Pelling, new Academy manager Gareth Jennings, director of recruitment Brian Tinnion, under-21 manager Mark O’Connor and under-18 boss Carlos Anton. Pelling ran City’s academy for eight months before ascending to his current position on the board of directors and it is his idea that the players should watch the game from the directors box and be presented to the crowd on the pitch at half time. Of course, it remains to be seen how many of the eight, if any, eventually break into the senior set-up and become regular members of the first team squad. As always, that represents the litmus paper by which success must inevitably be measured. Although disappointingly few players have come through City’s youth system and gone on to play regular League football for the Robins during the past two decades – Louis Carey and Cole Skuse are the notable exceptions – there is evidence that recent improvements are finally yielding tangible results. Joe Bryan, Wes Burns and Bobby Reid have all established themselves in the first team squad and earned extended contracts, while manager Steve Cotterill has always maintained he will give youth a chance, just so long as the players concerned are good enough. If anybody doubts his word, they should remember that it was Cotterill who first gave England and Southampton striker Jay Rodriguez his first team chance at Burnley several years ago. Only last week, Cotterill, who is an avid watcher of Under-21 football, was extolling the virtues of Marley Bishop, a young striker who only recently graduated from the club’s academy. Gareth Jennings was recently recruited from Leicester City to manage the Academy at Ashton Gate and he is charged with the task of developing the next generation. Category Two status means the Robins now play against better opposition, are properly funded, able to offer excellent facilities and represent an altogether more attractive proposition for young footballers and their families. Although supporters invariably judge Academies based on the number of players they produce for the first team, there is more to their role than initially meets the eye. Previously, any player who failed to cut the mustard and earn a professional contract was unceremoniously thrown on the scrapheap, left to pick up the pieces of his broken dreams and rebuild his life under his own auspices. Thankfully, those days are long gone and Bristol City pay particular attention to developing the individual and ensuring their students are capable of finding employment outside of football in the event they don’t make the grade. City scholars receive education at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College in Filton in a bid to prepare them for the outside world and the football club takes seriously the task of ensuring their future welfare. Of the scholars who left this summer, three were able to gain places at universities in the United States based on their football skills, while one other was awarded a professional contract with a Conference team. Gareth Jennings explains: “There are some very exciting times ahead for our Academy. We have a lot of very talented young players coming through the system, with a very strong Academy workforce to support them. Our vision is to be the leading Academy in the country and develop players to play in the Bristol City first team. There will be a focus on developing each player as an individual, but also feeling part of the Bristol City family and upholding our professional values. Players will form good habits which will be reflective both in and outside of the game.” Although we hear precious little mention of the club’s hitherto much-vaunted five pillars policy these days, it is refreshing to see the club is actively engaged in the crucial work of developing English players for the future. As John Pelling writes in his programme notes this weekend: “The challenge for this group of lads is the same as it is for the club and English football in general. There is plenty of bright talent around – now it’s about converting them into good enough players for the professional game. “That’s a subject which continues to challenge everyone in football from FA chairman Greg Dyke and his commission downwards. We hope that by offering our eight the professional contracts that their performances have merited we are making a positive contribution to that debate.” Amen to that. http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/BRISTO...-grow-policy/story-22910917-detail/story.html
