Sorry for yet another post regarding the Academy, but the Ben Marshall 'alleged' £500K transfer gossip raised a point with me. I believe that the Academy was opened in 1998, and at a (very rough) guess, the annual running costs, for arguments sake would be in the region of £5 million (that would not include the cost of the building etc) and since opening, so that gives us a total of around £65 million. Now then, how many players have graduated to the first team, I can think of Wilkinson and he is not exactly a regular is he, and then I'm stuck. No doubt there are some on the periphery of the 25 man squad, but how many else. If a player is in the Academy for (say) 3 years, how much does that cost Mr Coates on an annual basis per player (including wages) - no idea? OK if Marshall goes for £500K, how much of a loss of time and money is that??? Quite happy to be shot down on this one by the way. I suppose my real question is, why bother with the Academy at all if Pulis is not going to use it properly??
I thought all of the academy players were released at the end of last season and a whole new set recruited for this year. The club have adopted a new training regime at all levels, from the advanced training centres for school boys up to first team level, based on developing close ball control(!) so that players become comfortable on the ball. I believe it was TP's decision to do this!! It will be interesting to see how many players come through the system in the future and whether or not our style of play changes because of the skills that the players have been taught and are practising on a daily basis. I always thought TP was against the academy system, and has only gone down this route due to 'outside pressures' rather than personal choice. If it's true that he has started to buy into it, given that he has chosen the training system, it would be pointless to go to all that trouble and expense and not reap the benefits of it in terms of giving players a chance to show what they can do. Unfortunately, it would take a few years for players going through the new training regime to come through the academy system ready for the first team, so we may have to wait a while before we know whether all this investment is worthwhile.
I am a player from the acadamy that broke into the first team Or not, i was dropped in under 12s. Haha what a shame, i can pass to my team mates
