Academy to close | Vital Football

Academy to close

condorman

Vital 1st Team Regular
This news saddens me in some ways but I presume the club see it as an expensive nice to have when we have seen better return on investment and better quality players from elsewhere (loan to buy with Bidwell etc, gray from non league, woods from lower league,)
 
If the rumours are all true quite shocked by this as the academy seemed to be a big part of MB's master plan. Whether some other form of youth set up will be put in place who knows.

I am sure there are very good reasons for it all but it seems a shame when we have developed such a well thought of academy system.

 
Agree with you both Condor / Kent, on the face of it sad news. I think BFC are taking a hard look at everything and clearly there is a tightening of expenditure in some areas

I'd like to wait and see a full explanation, if this was leaked it is not nice for the kids and their families to find out in this way. Rasmus Ankersen gave one of his interviews the other day and said that he'd been busy reviewing the academy. With hindsight it may have been better for him to wait to give a post season interview including background on this decision.

I can understand it if it is explained properly and if we are looking at other ways to find and develop young talent - this is, or was, a cornerstone of MB's philosophy.

 
I presume there will still be some form of youth set up and we will still have the Dev Squad for sub first team players.
 
The statement on the OS implies any youth set up will be through the Community Trust, not really near the same level as an Academy so in reality it has gone except for 17 and above.
 
That's about the long and short of it Kentbee.

I can understand it if in the cold light of day the cost v reward isn't adding up. Maybe MB prefers to invest this into the squad in such a competitive division it makes sense. Does anyone know how much his involvement in FCM costs him, and what they do in respect of an academy?
 
That's about the long and short of it Kentbee.

I can understand it if in the cold light of day the cost v reward isn't adding up. Maybe MB prefers to invest this into the squad in such a competitive division it makes sense. Does anyone know how much his involvement in FCM costs him, and what they do in respect of an academy?
 
Bit strange but I've always thought that 99% of youth academies must lose money. Not as if a promising youngster would stay anyway.
 
Roman - I think thats the crux of it. Really promising players are picked off anyway for a poor fee by the bigger clubs
 
Dear All

Fairly obvious the rationale behind it and I can't fault the logic.

Just wondering whether parading the Under 8s before the Fulham game was such a wise move.

It sounds like PG and RA had an interesting meeting the other day - I accept there's no easy way to do this, but I'm not sure the club have come out so well given various articles in the media.

I guess that it will blow over reasonably quickly though.

Regards

Gordon
 
Rumour is that Man City are picking up the young lad Poveda for £50k, someone we believe to be uber-talented for his age.

As Gordon says, you cant fault the logic
 
When you accept the logic, put together with a specific Brentford example it says it all really. I've moved past mildly skeptical with these big MB decisions, and on this issue i'm sure he'll find a better way. The villains here are not BFC , it is the system rigged in favour of the so called elite.

I'm guessing but I think MB's rationale here is to throw all we can at getting up, then we can look at these things again.

In my view the only area we need to look at once again is the pr / comms side, somehow we seem to have come out of this looking bad and without the facts being presented fairly - why?

 
The leak came through the local press. They found out about it and were told to keep it quiet for 48 hours until the parents and players were told. They didn't. The club/comms were naive to say the least when expecting the press to hold the story. Shambles.

There has been very little value coming through the academy. MB was hoping for 2-3 first teamers by now. Instead we've got a couple of fringe squad players. As people have said above anyone really good will get picked off for peanuts so what's the point. Try before you buy has been a far more successful policy for us.
 
Ahhh Mr Beefeater, nice to have you back on here - where have you been??

Gotta keep this little place going you know - it's precious and we all play nice.

Seems like we are all pretty much in agreement re the academy decision then, others will follow.
 
It isn’t just the comms, for me it is part of the management capability issue.

I totally agree that if it isn’t working then by all means scrap it, but there are ways and ways. A number of points occur to me.

o Wasn’t the fact that our players could get picked off cheaply by big clubs known when the academy was set up?
o The Under 8’s were on the pitch only a few weeks ago so the decision ‘What to do’ was made quickly and the decision ‘How to do it’ was quick too.
o The ‘How to do it’ has been very poor
o Surely ‘Management Gurus’ should be better than this?