I wrote this this morning but forgot to post it.
The article in the Stir on a 50% ex-academy representation in the first team got me thinking a bit (after the initial "this means there is little or no money available for the scale of re-build that is going to be required so we are going the so-called "youth route" again with Adkins as the new David Weir). Coming at it from another angle the Academy is not cheap to run and does not appear to be producing enough players good enough for our first team. I can't help thinking that its cost-effectiveness is coming under more and more scrutiny at Board level and it is going to have to start delivering if it is to continue at Category 2.
Speculation on my part for sure but Adkins has a "positivist" way of speaking that turns a problem into a challenge so, reading between the lines, when Adkins says that academy graduates are at the heart of the recruitment strategy for his player identification model and goes on to say,
“You’ve got to put pressure on yourself. If you have an academy then you’ve got to make sure there is a pathway through and that we are producing good players. We’ve done it before at other clubs and there’s an affinity there. It won’t happen, that 50 per cent target, overnight but it’s a good business model....Players have to be robust, athletic, quick, ball playing warriors. They have to be good for Sheffield United.”
I am reading
“We are under financial pressure across the Board. If you have an academy then it has to produce players good enough for the first team as we don't have the funds to buy the players we need and this is now the club's business model and its not working at the moment....the Academy therefore has to start producing players who are robust, athletic, quick, ball playing warriors and good for Sheffield United's first team or there is no point having it.”
Consider Watford who made an application for category 1 status a while back but reversed it and opted for category 3 for cost reasons. There are significant cost (and other) implications of the Academy level such as (from a Watford newspaper article at the time) -
1) Category 1 status must have several full time employees that, under Category 3, can be made part-time or removed all together eg sports scientist, coach developer, strength and conditioning coach, performance analyst and head of education.
2) The number of coaches employed to work with players under the age of 16 can be reduced. In a Category 1 training session there has to be at least one coach for every eight players. In Category 3 that ratio is one in ten.
3) The guidelines say a Category 1 Academy should spend £2.3m per year, while a Category 3 club’s recommended spending is only £500,000.
4) Under Category 1, Under-11 players receive an annual total of at least 368 hours of tuition.Under Category 3 however, Under-11s could receive as little as 120 hours a year.
5) The opposition is at a lower level in competitive matches.
6) A talented 16-year-old registered with a Category 1 Academy since Under-9 level could attract £200,000 in compensation. For the same player, a Category 3 club would receive £71,500. This replaced the old tribunal process and effectively the fixed rate can mean reduced returns for clubs on player "finds".
7) Category 1 Academy, clubs are required to have a floodlit grass pitch, an indoor surface available all year round and match analysis suites. These are not a requirement for Category 3. As a Category 3 Academy there would be no need for us to retain the Atlas and Norfolk ground.
I've not found the Cat 2 data yet.
My guess is that, unless the Academy starts to deliver first team players or income to the club sooner rather than later, there may well be an axe taken to its status and scale. Austerity indeed.
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