Is it time to ditch Shirecliffe ?

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SandyMcBlade

SandyMcBlade

Bennyandtheblades
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Should McCabe sell Shirecliffe to the Wendys and shares with Sheffield FC in building a ground nearer the Lane ..
Also the Development squad seems to be just a waste of money because on the very rare occasion we have had some one good enough for the first team they are sold on,and the ones we keep seem to be just an excuse not to spend money...
 

And you take your eye off recruiting the players in the positions you need, and focus on developing what's actually coming through, which is rarely what you actually need.

And it's very expensive.

UTB
 
SandyMcBlade said:
Should McCabe sell Shirecliffe to the Wendys and shares with Sheffield FC in building a ground nearer the Lane ..
Also the Development squad seems to be just a waste of money because on the very rare occasion we have had some one good enough for the first team they are sold on,and the ones we keep seem to be just an excuse not to spend money...
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What absolote rubbish.

It's our training ground, and a very good one at that.

Secondly the academy is well worth it. In just the past 5 years alone it has brought in over 7 million in transfer fees and that's just McGuire, slew, lowton, Quinn and then any nominal fees on top of that. As well as the 8million plus we got for naughton and walker in 2009.

Clubs sell players it's a fact. So you may as well grow your own and sell them and make a much bigger profit margain. In the meantime those players will make your team better and should bring you some success. For instance lowton, Maguire and Quinn were big parts of almost getting us promoted the other year, it wasn't their fault Evans got sent down or the pigs had an incredible run of form.

The problem isn't with shirecliffe, it's with united probably selling the products a bit too early or not getting quite enough for them.

If anything we should be putting more into it to develop more players to bring through.
 
Borbokisfreekick said:
The problem isn't with shirecliffe, it's with united probably selling the products a bit too early or not getting quite enough for them.
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Yup. It's the same at most clubs. If you're on the up you get to keep your promising players for longer and it's a virtuous circle.

However, when you're on your uppers...
 
Of course we should sell it.

And replace the stands at the Lane with corrugated iron roofs, re sign Don Givens, eat pies before games, have team socials in Isabella's, train amongst dog crap on a windswept field and adopt all the great ideas that took us to Division 4 last time.

As above, the policy of how we use our youth and bring them through is what needs refreshing, not the facility itself.
 
Worth considering for me. Isn't it a fact now that the premiership teams can just cherry pick any outstanding young talent, let them pay and develop their own. Yes we have turned up some decent youngsters in the past, but that seems to be drying up. The only one looking likely is DCL, even that isn't a certainty. There are pros and cons for having the academy but at the moment it's leaning towards the latter.
 
As far as producing and attracting the best young players to the club it has been a big success, of course we the fans have seen nothing from the academy in regards of a better team, I was a big supporter of the idea that we would generate our own players, build a great team around those who shine and add to them with more hungry young players who would be proud to wear our shirt and take United forward, saving us having to buy expensive players, making our club stronger in the transfer market because we'd have half a team of great players that were home grown...

Sadly it appears to have been the equivalent of a puppy farm, where the results when gained are quickly sold on leaving us to rely on old tired has beens and languishing in league one, just a look at the players sold and where they are playing since we came out of the premier league will tell you where the problem lies...

I understand the replays I might get here, we can't hold onto them in league one, yadda yadda yadda, but that's just excuses is it, because we were selling players while we were in the championship and looking to get promoted, Blackwell, slew etc, etc,

If we aren't going to benefit from the academy on the pitch, which is where the fans should see the rewards then bin it for me, it's an indicator that the club are more interested in a decent balance sheet, and finally, don't come with the we haven't got the money to turn these deals down because when the board say we don't have to sell our best players things are very rosy in the bank department..

We sell to fund the running of the club, the fans and sponsors pay the rest....

Baxter or Adams will be the one to go..... Anybody worth selling, we sell em, first chance we get, that's why we're in league one, because good players make good teams, we sell the good players, we get a shit team, simple really..
 
Tezza1889 said:
As far as producing and attracting the best young players to the club it has been a big success, of course we the fans have seen nothing from the academy in regards of a better team, I was a big supporter of the idea that we would generate our own players, build a great team around those who shine and add to them with more hungry young players who would be proud to wear our shirt and take United forward, saving us having to buy expensive players, making our club stronger in the transfer market because we'd have half a team of great players that were home grown...

Sadly it appears to have been the equivalent of a puppy farm, where the results when gained are quickly sold on leaving us to rely on old tired has beens and languishing in league one, just a look at the players sold and where they are playing since we came out of the premier league will tell you where the problem lies...

I understand the replays I might get here, we can't hold onto them in league one, yadda yadda yadda, but that's just excuses is it, because we were selling players while we were in the championship and looking to get promoted, Blackwell, slew etc, etc,

If we aren't going to benefit from the academy on the pitch, which is where the fans should see the rewards then bin it for me, it's an indicator that the club are more interested in a decent balance sheet, and finally, don't come with the we haven't got the money to turn these deals down because when the board say we don't have to sell our best players things are very rosy in the bank department..

We sell to fund the running of the club, the fans and sponsors pay the rest....

Baxter or Adams will be the one to go..... Anybody worth selling, we sell em, first chance we get, that's why we're in league one, because good players make good teams, we sell the good players, we get a shit team, simple really..
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It's repeated so often that it's now accepted as fact.

All clubs sell players.It's wholly unrealistic to think that we wont - though he timing of a few( (Blackman) has been daft.

It's been the terrible recruitment that we've subsequently made that is the thing that sets us out form so many other clubs.

UTB
 
alcoblade said:
It's repeated so often that it's now accepted as fact.

All clubs sell players.It's wholly unrealistic to think that we wont - though he timing of a few( (Blackman) has been daft.

It's been the terrible recruitment that we've subsequently made that is the thing that sets us out form so many other clubs.

UTB
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Precisely, a good club will sell players they've developed where necessary but will re-invest the money wisely to make the squad strong. We've wasted almost all of the money we've made.
 
Don't forget nothing has changed at all since the prince came on board.

Macdonald 1st
McGuire 2nd
Murphy this season..

We've had the piss took out of us too long....

McCabe and the prince out, because it can't get much worse can it..
 

crucialkneeligaman said:
Worth considering for me. Isn't it a fact now that the premiership teams can just cherry pick any outstanding young talent, let them pay and develop their own. Yes we have turned up some decent youngsters in the past, but that seems to be drying up. The only one looking likely is DCL, even that isn't a certainty. There are pros and cons for having the academy but at the moment it's leaning towards the latter.
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The poaching and compensation rules were amended to be heavily in favour of the richest few, yes. A scandalous decision that seemed to go under the radar at the time. They basically blackmailed the league clubs into accepting their role as a poorly paid development zone for the top 20 clubs and made it cheaper for them to take a punt on anyone half decent. No doubt he good of the England team was rolled out as part of the justification.

I think we need an academy. If set up correctly along with a long term first team strategy you can develop players with an affinity to the club, the adopted style and a path to the first team. An extreme example being Ajax. Closer to home and used to slightly different ends is Crewe.
 
diplomat said:
The poaching and compensation rules were amended to be heavily in favour of the richest few, yes. A scandalous decision that seemed to go under the radar at the time. They basically blackmailed the league clubs into accepting their role as a poorly paid development zone for the top 20 clubs and made it cheaper for them to take a punt on anyone half decent. No doubt he good of the England team was rolled out as part of the justification.

I think we need an academy. If set up correctly along with a long term first team strategy you can develop players with an affinity to the club, the adopted style and a path to the first team. An extreme example being Ajax. Closer to home and used to slightly different ends is Crewe.
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I don't accept that you can develop players with an affinity for the club, not in a way that delivers tangible benefits. It's wholly money orientated.

The biggest Blade that came through the ranks in undoubtedly Kyle Walker. He left at the first sign of a better offer.

The difference is that he'd now walk for much less compensation.

UTB
 
It's all chicken and egg; we sell one of our best players each time we fail to get promoted. We don't get promoted because we sell our best players.

Let's spend a fortune on a new pitch and an obscene amount on players' wages but start talking about selling the academy. So we can piss the money on some more fucking championship wasters and lose the regular income we get from selling the academy players.

Because the people that are responsible for us pouring money down the drain on has been players and never have been managers will be capable of setting up a scouting network that will find us the next Callum Wilson and Matt Richie and not the next Darryl Westlake or Lyle Taylor.
 
It's something KM has mentioned numerous times his dream of a "Blades" team containing a majority of home produced. It's a dream most supporters would love to come to fruition. The reality is we only have Reed anywhere near the first team, we have had very few cameo appearances from any others, it may change, but it's not obvious at the moment it has to be a disappointing return on the resources put into the Academy IMO
 
BushBlade said:
Because the people that are responsible for us pouring money down the drain on has been players and never have been managers will be capable of setting up a scouting network that will find us the next Callum Wilson and Matt Richie and not the next Darryl Westlake or Lyle Taylor.
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We could just pack it all in then. :)

Like it or not, the players brought in from the scouting network are
deemed way in front of those coming in from the academt, by successive managers.

As rubbish as we are, academy players around the first team are still rarer than rocking horse shit.

We may or may not be able to support an academy. We may or may not be better or worse off for it.

But it's without doubt that if we continue to fail in the transfer market, we are going to continue to fail as a club.

We have to sort that part out. We don't have to have an academy.

UTB
 
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Re transfer fees don't we gain twice, sometimes at least?

We don't have to pay the fee that would bring the player in the first place, and if and when we do sell there is the more obvious profit?

Eg we now have Long and Reed as first team squad players which means in simple/simplistic terms we have not had to spend money filling those positions. That finance is therefore available to spend on other players.

If you accept that Long is a good enough replacement for Howard then that's saved us £100 000 say.

More romantically I'd much rather we won the European Cup with a squad of 43 players all born within a stone's (or coin's, or flare's) throw of BDTBL - a bit like the Lisbon Lions.

I don't really want to watch a *full team* of mercenaries in which no-one has any affinity for the club. It'd be like watching an NFL franchise.
 
My only criticism of Shirecliffe is that it is quite a long way from the Lane, and it can be a long drive between the two with traffic. It's also pretty inaccessible for fans without a car. Many clubs have training facilities very close to their stadiums. But it's really not a big concern,
 
William Henry Foulkes said:
we now have Long and Reed as first team squad players which means in simple/simplistic terms we have not had to spend money filling those positions. That finance is therefore available to spend on other players.

If you accept that Long is a good enough replacement for Howard then that's saved us £100 000 say.......................

I don't really want to watch a *full team* of mercenaries in which no-one has any affinity for the club. It'd be like watching an NFL franchise.
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We've had to spend an absolute fortune filling those positions. Reed and Long will be the most costly players in the entire squad, without a doubt. The only real question is does the sale of the best products pay for the cost of developing the majority of poorer ones.

Your point about mercenaries doesn't hold. Home grown Kyle Walker and Kyle Naughton were just as mercenary as any of the players brought in since.

UTB
 
Our Academy has been downgraded to Category 2 due to EPPP and the Premier League clubs love the EPPP cos they can pick our talented players for very little compensation. I would scrap the Academy but keep the u21s (our scouting network should concentrate on scouting the best of Academy rejects throughout the country and offer the rejects to play for our u21s. I would keep our Shirecliffe centre as our training centre for during the working hours but run it as a sports centre outside the working hours
 
alcoblade said:
We could just pack it all in then. :)

Like it or not, the players brought in from the scouting network are
deemed way in front of those coming in from the academt, by successive managers.

As rubbish as we are, academy players around the first team are still rarer than rocking horse shit.

We may or may not be able to support an academy. We may or may not be better or worse off for it.

But it's s without doubt that if we continue to fail in the transfer market, we are going to continue to fail as a club.

We have to sort that part out. We don't have to have an academy.

UTB
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Because of what you said in your penultimate paragraph, I'm afraid I tend to agree with your first one.

But my point is we have spent plenty of money on players but most of it has been wasted. Until we sort that out, selling off our assets to fund more wastage is just the path to terminal decline.
 
Silent Blade said:
Our Academy has been downgraded to Category 2 due to EPPP and the Premier League clubs love the EPPP cos they can pick our talented players for very little compensation. I would scrap the Academy but keep the u21s (our scouting network should concentrate on scouting the best of Academy rejects throughout the country and offer the rejects to play for our u21s. I would keep our Shirecliffe centre as our training centre for during the working hours but run it as a sports centre outside the working hours
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The categorisation is dependent on your yearly spend on the academy. To be Cat 1 you have to spend £1.5m per year. I'd guess we don't want to spend that much while we are in L1, understandably so. There's no reason why we can't upgrade when we're in a bigger league and can afford to do so.
How much would we save by scrapping the academy and using it as a sports centre?
And in the long term, what happens when the pigs start producing kids from their academy, kids that may well have gone to ours instead?
 
BushBlade said:
The categorisation is dependent on your yearly spend on the academy. To be Cat 1 you have to spend £1.5m per year. I'd guess we don't want to spend that much while we are in L1, understandably so. There's no reason why we can't upgrade when we're in a bigger league and can afford to do so.
How much would we save by scrapping the academy and using it as a sports centre?
And in the long term, what happens when the pigs start producing kids from their academy, kids that may well have gone to ours instead?
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It is worth having an Academy only if we are in the Premier League. We have had the Academy since 2001 but we have had just one season in the PL.
 
Silent Blade said:
It is worth having an Academy only if we are in the Premier League. We have had the Academy since 2001 but we have had just one season in the PL.
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Then all the championship clubs that have them must be doing something wrong then.
 

BushBlade said:
Then all the championship clubs that have them must be doing something wrong then.
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I dont have knowledge about how much the Championship clubs are reaping the rewards from having an Academy apart from Wendy. In the last 5 or 6 years only Liam Palmer and Joe Wildsmith I can think of that have gone through the ranks. Palmer has played only 4 games this season so far. I spoke to a Wendy Academy coach last season and he fully agrees with me that the PL now have too much power in the Academy system, He says the new owners have decided to expand the Academy even though it is still in Category 2. Lets see if it will work well for them in the next few years
 
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