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Feeder Clubs

Spilsby52 said:
Do those two teams have some sort of link? I know a youth team keeper who has been with the Southampton academy but then moved to Yeovil as well.
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I would think they have "preferred" clubs. They loaned Sam Gallagher the last 2 years to Blackburn and the year before MK Dons. This year he is in the first team squad.

Harrison Reed again currently at Blackburn. Last year at Norwich

Can't say for sure but I would think they tend to deal with a couple of clubs at each level of the pyramid. So a player might go L2 one year, L1 the next etc.

They have loaned in L1 to Swindon, Barnsley and MK Dons in recent years to my memory.

Blackburn, Middlesboro, Reading have "fringe" Saints players on loan at the moment in the championship.

I don;t think it is so much the locality. Can;t get much further (in the English league) than Middlesboro More a few clubs (managers) they trust at each level to progress their youngsters and see if they are ready for the Prem or not. Doesn't seem to be working too well at the moment lol. Not many academy players in their first team.

I am pretty sure the Cowleys are benefiting from other manager's/clubs trusting them.
 
Luke Imp said:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/sep/06/football-league-loan-deals
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"“Some Championship sides are taking players in order to try to reach the Premier League. In Leagues One and Two it’s much more about development" That's from Shaun Harvey.

To what extent is that even close to true? Ben Woodburn is mentioned in that article but he's at Sheffield United for development - at least as far as Liverpool are concerned. And Sheff Utd can't afford a top class striker.

On the other hand, our loan signings - the ones who are playing - have been brought in with promotion in mind.

The other reason League 2 clubs would do it, of course, is to avoid taking players on longer term contracts. Development is a side issue. The Macclesfield keeper had a great game last Saturday but he is not being developed for Manchester United's benefit.
 
In league one and two I don't think it's any different, the clubs are trying to get a top player on the cheap to improve the side. At the end of the day the development always comes second. However for the premier league club it's a different matter as they will try and choose the clubs the player goes to that will give them the best chance of development.
 
Brendan Bradley said:
"“Some Championship sides are taking players in order to try to reach the Premier League. In Leagues One and Two it’s much more about development" That's from Shaun Harvey.

To what extent is that even close to true? Ben Woodburn is mentioned in that article but he's at Sheffield United for development - at least as far as Liverpool are concerned. And Sheff Utd can't afford a top class striker.

On the other hand, our loan signings - the ones who are playing - have been brought in with promotion in mind.

The other reason League 2 clubs would do it, of course, is to avoid taking players on longer term contracts. Development is a side issue. The Macclesfield keeper had a great game last Saturday but he is not being developed for Manchester United's benefit.
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Harvey was bound to say that given his thoughts on U23's in the Checkatrade.
 
Luke Imp said:
Harvey was bound to say that given his thoughts on U23's in the Checkatrade.
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Yes, good point, but just more proof of the agenda-driven BS these people come out with.

The problem is allowing PL clubs to contract so many unnecessary players. Chelsea currently have 40 (yes, forty) players out on loan, a couple of them to other PL sides. Half of these players are British

One of the non-British half, Mario Pasalic, is a 23 year old full Croatian international well known to me as he played for the side I watch as a 19 year old. That was his first season on loan from Chelsea. He is now on his fifth team on loan from Chelsea in five seasons and has played in five different countries. But never in England.

That is no good for his development as a player at all, but if he, nor Zouma nor Kenedy nor Hazard junior can make the Chelsea squad - and current England international Loftus Cheek has a good day if he gets on the bench after being "developed" at Palace last season (he's played 35 minutes so far this season), then what chance say the delightfully named English defender Fankaty Dabo, 23 in a couple of weeks and exiled in Holland after 15 games for Swindon? He's been with Chelsea since he was 12. Exactly what are they grooming him for?

The academy system doesn't work but the football establishment has to pretend it does and it's the league that needs tweaking.
 
Correct.

As it says in the article, there's an issue with the PL academies if most of those who get released end up dropping way down the leagues.
 
Every prem club now has a squad that is double the size of Liverpool’s European cup winning squads of the 80s. This clearly dilutes standards lower down the ladder.
I’d force clubs to slash squad sizes. End multiple club ownership. Limit foreign player numbers in squads.
Also, if we are to suffer this premier league loan cancer thing.
A fairer system needs to be introduced.
1st in the premier can only loan to 20th in championship. 2nd in prem to 19th. Ect.
Of course this would be for players in the first team squad zone.
Younger players could be loaned to lower divisions.
It’s quite an easy system.
 
Imps2018 said:
Both south coast? Clubs tend to loan to others in the area. (Us with Boston, Gainsborough, Lincoln Utd etc.)
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Yes , we've dealt with these clubs a lot over the years, understandably. But I've always thought we should have better links with our reasonably local big clubs - Forest, the two Sheffield clubs, Hull, maybe even Leeds. They are not really that far away -
but we've had relatively few players from these over the years.
 
Brendan Bradley said:
The other reason League 2 clubs would do it, of course, is to avoid taking players on longer term contracts. Development is a side issue. The Macclesfield keeper had a great game last Saturday but he is not being developed for Manchester United's benefit.
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That is probably it in a nutshell. The players loaned by PL clubs to L2 and the National League are surely those whom they already know have no chance of making it at the top level. Sometimes you can land a gem - I think Josh Vickers may be one of those - but the majority are not very good and end up with mediocre careers after having such high expectations. No wonder depression in the game seems to be a problem.
 
89spartans_12/03/77 said:
Every prem club now has a squad that is double the size of Liverpool’s European cup winning squads of the 80s. This clearly dilutes standards lower down the ladder.
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To emphasise that, how many of Lincoln's current squad are likely to play in the Premier League at any stage?

Contrast that to the number of players who made it from Murphy's teams of the early 80s: Phil Turner, Gordon Hobson, Glenn Cockerill, Trevor Peake, Steve Thompson, Tony Cunningham, Mick Harford and John Fashanu spring readily to mind. The latter two were capped by England.
 
Brendan Bradley said:
The academy system doesn't work but the football establishment has to pretend it does and it's the league that needs tweaking.
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So the crux seems to be that the players coming through the academy system are not as good as the players being brought into English football from all corners of the globe. That is hardly surprising, and is where the problem lies.

It is a mistake to think of the Premier League as an English league. It has become slowly but surely disconnected from the rest of us in English football. Because a large number of the best players in the world are here, it is really a global league where the clubs just happen to play in England. That is significantly at odds with the academy system, and I am not sure what kind of a future the clubs and the governing bodies think that system has.

If they want to see more academy players appearing in Premier League first teams, they have to restrict the number of imports. If they are unwilling to do that (and they surely will be, because that reduces potential broadcasting income from around the world), they need to stop bleating about the failure of an academy system that has no chance of working in the first place.
 
Scotimp said:
So the crux seems to be that the players coming through the academy system are not as good as the players being brought into English football from all corners of the globe. That is hardly surprising, and is where the problem lies.

It is a mistake to think of the Premier League as an English league. It has become slowly but surely disconnected from the rest of us in English football. Because a large number of the best players in the world are here, it is really a global league where the clubs just happen to play in England. That is significantly at odds with the academy system, and I am not sure what kind of a future the clubs and the governing bodies think that system has.

If they want to see more academy players appearing in Premier League first teams, they have to restrict the number of imports. If they are unwilling to do that (and they surely will be, because that reduces potential broadcasting income from around the world), they need to stop bleating about the failure of an academy system that has no chance of working in the first place.
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The only reason the premiership pay any lip service to developing English talent is because they are supposed to be the cradle of talent for the England team. Obviously the FA run the England team but not the Premiership. The FA does have a veto vote for the Premier League which includes for example the election of the chairman and rules changes for the league. The Premier League therefore basically do the minimum requirement for developing talent to keep the FA happy(ish) since it's cheaper to buy the finished article from abroad.

Neither of these 2 organisations have any interest in the Football League other than providing relegation excitement. Therefore they don't care one bit if League 1 or League 2 withered on the vine.
 
Sincilbanks said:
The Premier League therefore basically do the minimum requirement for developing talent to keep the FA happy(ish) since it's cheaper to buy the finished article from abroad.
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It is far more expensive in the first instance to buy that finished article from abroad than to develop an academy player. But the issue revolves around broadcasting income. How many foreign broadcasters would continue to pay hundreds of millions of pounds for the rights to show English matches comprising two teams of homegrown academy players? The signing of that finished article is extremely expensive comparatively, but he is being signed using the obscene amounts of money being handed to each Premier League club on a plate. A virtuous circle financially, but one which inevitably restricts the number of homegrown players who are likely to make it.

Therefore, it would be a very poor financial decision by the Premier League clubs to have a large number of homegrown English players in their sides because global broadcasting income would reduce, perhaps drastically.

Whatever we may think about the number of imports, there are some fabulously talented players among them. In my lifetime, the standard of player in the English top flight has never been higher. That is what the television companies want to see, not Josh Ginnelly playing for Burnley.
 
As there's an article on the BBC website about a former Everton Academy player now at Chester who is talking about his personal issues (don't worry, I'm not going down that road again), I thought I'd take a quick peek at Everton's success rates.

Football clubs are never short of a fanfare on their own behalf and Everton refer to their own "world class academy"

They helpfully have a list of Academy graduates who played at least once for Everton so I thought I'd quickly look at who they've brought through. My cut off is that they're born no earlier than 1990 so it excludes Rooney but there's a good 10 years worth of Academy talent to go at including players now at their peak.

In that time they have four players who have made even 10 appearances for the club - Jack Rodwell, Ross Barkley, Tom Davies and Jonjoe Kenny. The first two are no longer with them of course and their careers stalled. Davies is a regular and Kenny is the back up right back.

Others have done quite well elsewhere. Shane Duffy has made it to the PL and some are in the Championship now, but mostly they're a forgettable bunch, even if big things were predicted of them as a teenager like Jose Baxter, now at Oldham.

So in 10 years Everton's world-class academy has brought through 3 players good enough for its first team.
 
How much does it cost to run a PL academy? £5m a year? £10m? More? This article from 2016 gives us some idea:

United's academy costs £3.5million a year to run, woefully shy of the £12m pumped into City's set-up and the £7m Chelsea invest in their lavish academy system.

If Everton's cost £10m a year they would need to produce one decent PL player every three years to break even given the current state of transfer fees. The rest can fall by the wayside or be sold on.
 
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are the premier league academies actually full of 'homegrown' players? i thought the chelsea u23 squad last season had a few non-english players in it. who are presumably bought in at some stage of their academy development.
 
Luke Imp said:
Correct.

As it says in the article, there's an issue with the PL academies if most of those who get released end up dropping way down the leagues.
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But that's absolutely in the smaller clubs' favour. The economies of scale just aren't there to run a decent academy... If Lincoln spent £250,000 a year on one we'd need to produce a Woodyard every season to break even. And that just ain't going to happen.

Instead, let the Premier League plough in the money, loan in some of the prospects and pick up the best of what they don't consider good enough. Personally I see no negative. Have I missed something?
 
nlondonimp said:
are the premier league academies actually full of 'homegrown' players? i thought the chelsea u23 squad last season had a few non-english players in it. who are presumably bought in at some stage of their academy development.
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Fifa bans overseas transfers of children under 18. Up to 16 a kid has to live within an hour and a half drive from their club.

So clubs can buy in from 18 and those players are considered 'home grown' by Uefa at 21. But largely, because of the Fifa ban on minors and radius restrictions, academies are stocked with a lot of local British kids. And 90 percent of them are out of professional football by 21 years of age.

This thesis is interesting, chapter 2's case study of an academy in particular. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/5656/1/421405.pdf
 
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