Most profitable academy in Europe...go on guess.

http://babb.telegraph.co.uk/2015/03...y-is-the-most-profitable-in-european-football

Don't expect you needed 3 guesses to discover Saints have the most profitable academy in Europe . Don't you love it when a plan works.

 

Not really Fran ..... just think if they'd all been here with Theo and Bale as well.

 

Could of had our own "class of 92"

 

Interesting that there are no other PL teams in the top 10.
I also think that Fran is right, the plan IS working, those figures have been achieved with year-on-year improvements in our league standing.

 

Olyimpique Lyonnais' academy doesn't feature either. I guess they haven't sold anyone in a while, but yesterday in a 5-1 win against Montpellier, when Gourcuff was subbed for Ghezzal, there were 8 academy products on the pitch for Lyon! Imagine that, eight! And they're fighting with PSG for the title.

 

Two ways to judge an academy...purely on the money raised by sales, but also by money saved by not having to buy a player for the team. The latter is harder to judge, but is the major reason for having an academy. I think we have done well on both counts.

 

well duh!

 

Not forgetting OXO, and the steady drip, drip of players like Blackstock, Surman, Baird, Jones, McGoldrick, Best, Dyer, etc.. from before the administration. They all added value even though they went cheaper than they should have done, due to Saints desperately needing cash. Makes it all the sweeter that we have the shirt of people's backs these days.

 

Not to mention the likes of Martin Chivers and of course Alan Shearer!

 

So how much do we think we can get for Reed and Targett?

50 million each?

 

Maybe we shouldn't keep on about losing certain youth players (Walcott, Bale etc), since we have nabbed a few young-ish players from other clubs ourselves (Jay Rod, Clyne etc)

 

http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/...uthamptons-academy-most-profitable-in-europe/

Love NBC's report on our academy's financial success. As they put it: Southampton's Academy is awesome Also includes their long video on Saints...gave me a chance to watch it as I must be the only fan who hadn't seen it.

 

If every club in England followed Saints's academy methods and so forth there would not be a problem with the national team and maybe they would start playing at a standard more representative country that has a population of over 50 million people. But of course the national teams have been slowly declining since Chelsea and Man City started luring all these great youth players in on ridiculous money they can't turn down, and loaning them to lower league clubs and eventually selling them on to the likes of Sunderland/ Fulham etc to make room for the next flavour of the month player. If there was ( and there should be ) some sort of wage cap for players under the age of about 21 to stop this happening you can bet your house Southampton would be destination #1 for these youth players ( in England obviously ) and the difference in the national team would be telling.

 

Then we would not be able to challenge for the top four like we have done this season. The Premiership is not a level playing field, our academy, both in terms of revenue raised and players being successfully integrated into the first team, is one of the major reasons we have been able to improve our position year upon year for the last half decade.
If every club had an academy as good as ours, we'd be fighting for scraps, as the bigger teams (by which I mean those with larger fan-bases, stadia & financial backing) regain their advantage.
I like it how it is. I don't even mind losing players, as long as we are screwing other clubs over when it comes to the fee...

 

Totally agree and if every club had the conveyor belt of talent we have it would obviously offset the advantage of our academy. One of the many reasons Southampton is such a club to be proud of is the many young English players it has produced and will hopefully continue to produce. You could even argue the academy isn't the most valuable asset Saints have as the scouting network and recruitment department are obviously as good as anyone's in the country ( maybe even Europe ) and on a business/administrative level Saints are clearly also extremely well run. Great times for us fans considering the mess 6-7 odd years ago.

.

 

The posters that mention that Saints would lose their edge if every premier League had a similar academy, are correct in one way, and wrong in another. There is no other club which has a clear pathway to the first team. There is no guarantee of a first team place in a Saints eleven, but the chances are that you will get a chance. Other clubs can't say the same.

Where Saints really score is tying in all the data and being able to number crunch in such a way that they can reliably point out players to be watched. The scouting network doesn't have to work in a fog and grapevine, like other clubs seem to continue with. In fact, it seems that the grapevine exists mostly to alert other clubs as to which players Saints are watching.

 

Les Reed in the NBC video said that we often take young players overlooked by other clubs as they go for the big physically-advanced lads, whereas we will give youngsters a chance to grow. This does explain why we seem to have a lot of short arses in the Academy. So clubs like Chelsea will get the obvious 'next best thing' noticed by the press and yet we carry on doing well. Reed said we look for potential and try to give it time and the environment to grow.

 

Why beat around the bush and say Europe ? Surely its the most profitable academy in the world