Where's Clegg when you need a scapegoat?Seriously though to miss out by such a small margin smacks of some one not preparing properly.
Makes no odds what Cat the academy is, it's the quality of the coaches that make the difference....IMO
Dont agree wcp, surely its better to be playing against the likes of Arsenal rather than Col U? Also you can attract better players!!
Sounds like we shouldn't have criticised the audit before the results came out, smacks as two fingers up to you for criticising us to me. 0.3% what a joke and we have to wait a whole year to apply again!!!
A lot more to this than meets the eye....In my experience, you get audited, most areas you pass, a few areas you may fail, some areas you get recommendations to improve, the auditors then come back a couple of weeks/months later and go over the areas you fail or have recommendations on then re-calculate score! To miss out by less than half a percent smacks of either they did not want us to pass or we did not want to pass at this point in time!
Surely if it was that close they would say do this by x date and we will confirm your approval then. Sounds strange to me but so have a lot of things this club has done in the last 5 years.
I'm guessing by most people's posts on here (and TWTD) that everyone knows how we were audited and why we failed? Maybe the auditors gave us countless opportunities to re-address the issues, maybe we kept on failing the audit. I am pretty sure that as a club, we would've appealed if there was any chance of the report coming back different. Also, the target of 75% is there for a reason - you can't then move the goalposts because a club "nearly" achieved it. And anyway, i don't think it's as bad as it sounds - we came bottom of our development league last season, won approx two games (and thats agains clubs like palace, brentford, brighton..etc) imagine what would happen if we played some of the big boys? Our confidence would probably be knocked. IMO, lets walk before we can run - lets build a solid foundation in Cat 2, learn from our mistakes and move on.
I'll tell you what it smacks of, it smacks of Evans trying to penny pinch by squeezing through Cat 1 investing as little as possible. Spending on this stuff doesn't even count towards FFP. We should be aiming for 100%.
Looks like Town have screwed over by the FA, PL and Scudamore again. I don't think it really matters thought, as the Elite Player Performance Plan is heavily biased to favour the PL clubs anyway. Town would have spent all that money and time developing the players, and if any of them turned out any good a PL team would come in and poach them for 25,000. Whats the point in that? I'm afraid we're going to have to do it the hard way with free's and loans like Mick is doing. The academy is screwed, the system is screwed, Scudamore has effectively killed English football and Ipswich Town Football club. All eyes on Mick now. No pressure son!
you've not been screwed over by scudamore - you've screwed yourselves over by not fully committing to the category one proposal on two occasions. whether that be because you were trying to spend as little as possible and scrape in (most likely) or whether you just basically misjudged the whole operation (unlikely as auditors keep you updated with where you stand), its a total cock up that many of your fans have donated their own money towards. i disagree completely with the system but its here now and unless you have category one status you are hugely restricted in terms of youth development. you missed a trick when clegg turned down the opportunity to join in the beginning, even though many of his reasons for declining were actually quite reasonable. its not a system for everyone - its a system for the elite - but if you want to have a top academy its the only way forward and this failure bares all the hallmarks of a club doing as little as possible to get the biggest benefits.
what's to bite at? the truth? you've had a laugh at our expense over our terrible tour to italy but as soon as your club makes a cock up we aren't allowed to express an opinion? yeah, sounds about right...
Calm down Supers all this pent up frustration is not good for you! Take a deep breath... And another.... and Relax...
what on earth makes you think i'm not calm? i'm pissing myself* at the mess you've got yourselves in over this. *apart from bryan klug - love the guy - he deserves better than this
