Read my post after that. The rules are ****. Whether Portsmouth have rubbish academy or not is irrelevant. Cardiff Saint agrees with me.
A category 1 academy costs around £2m per year. That's about £40k per week. Considering that between them Norris an Ben Haim earn considerably more than that, it's not a bad deal, especially in the Championship wher it's possible to have several graduates urning out for the first team. A system like Crewe's run on a shoestringcan be equally valuable. Youth is the way forward.
My posts are not even remotely close to being a dig at Southampton and I don't begrudge Southampton for having a category one academy and trying to make the best of a **** system. It's still a **** system though.
The system stinks honestly. It is really more about money than about the young players. If we are stuck with it at least I am glad we are at the top.
More importantly, we can say that we are as good if not better than the really big clubs and that they won't be pinching our kids before they're out of nappies. Hopefully this doesn't lead to some clubs hoarding talent and taking on more kids than they can handle just to stop anyone else from having them. The bad news is for clubs like Crewe who do things well on a small scale, less so for clubs like Portsmouth who barely have an academy.
