Prem Clubs set to kill feeder system

[harlowranger]

Mirror - EXCLUSIVE: Prem clubs 'set to kill football's feeder system'


English football could be hours away from passing a death sentence on the feeder system which produced Joe Hart.

League clubs meeting in Walsall have been warned they could be “turkeys voting for Christmas” if they push through Premier League proposals to restructure the academy system.

Three Lions goalkeeper Hart landed at moneybags Manchester City via the academy at his hometown club, Shrewsbury - but the Mirror can reveal that the conveyor belt could be ruptured by rich clubs looking to hoover up all the nation’s brightest young talents.

To make sure the vote goes their way, the Premier League have threatened to suspend their annual £80,000 ‘solidarity’ payment to each of the 72 Football League clubs.


Academy directors warn the restructure would lead to:

* Fixed-price compensation when elite clubs take the brightest talents from smaller ‘feeder’ academies.

* Agents for primary-school children, as clubs fight for their signatures.

* Abolishing the ‘golden hour’ rule, which forbids clubs from signing schoolboys who live more than 60 minutes’ drive away.

* Possible closure of academies if they lose all their most promising kids to more affluent, grasping rivals.

The scramble for survival began when the Premier League’s director of youth, Ged Roddy - whose previous claims to fame include managing Team Bath - produced a blueprint entitled the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP).

Based on the laudable principle of raising standards - and broadly supported by Football Association technical development chief Sir Trevor Brooking - the plan contains more than 200 criteria for clubs who want their academies to be given Category One elite status.

Even clubs with enviable track records of producing home-grown talent, including Middlesbrough, Crewe, Crystal Palace, Watford and West Ham, may struggle to fulfil the EPPP requirements.

One academy director told the Mirror: “Some clubs are very unhappy, and you can hardly blame them when the Premier League is holding them to ransom and telling them to sign up for a revamp which is like turkeys voting for Christmas.

“The biggest bone of contention is that Category One clubs will be allowed to recruit youth team players from anywhere in the country.

“Another sore point is the proposed reduction of [the] compensation clubs would have to pay to take one of your best academy players.

“At the moment, those moves go to a tribunal if the two parties can’t agree a fee. But it’s going to be fixed - at a rate of £3,000 for every year a lad has been on the books of a club up to the age of 12. But Category One clubs can claim £25,000 for every year from 12-16.

“That is going to start bidding wars, and agents raising the stakes, over 10- and 11-year-old boys, and that can’t be healthy for the game.

“And when smaller clubs have been bled dry, and all their bright prospects have been signed by Chelsea or Manchester City, some of them are going to turn round and ask, ‘What’s the point of keeping our academy? Let’s shut the place down.’

“It’s a desperately worrying situation, and the Football League have recommended that we go along with it only because the Premier League have got us over a barrel.”

One manager keen to maintain a steady supply of academy talent to furnish the national team is Harry Redknapp, whose West Ham dynasty spawned Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole.

Redknapp, who is now drawing on Tottenham’s extensive academy pool of talent to furnish his first team, said: “The academy system is a massive part of English football’s conveyor belt and we should take care of it like the Crown Jewels.

“Finding good kids, and finding good coaches to work with them and teach the good habits, is absolutely fundamental - but finding the money, and funding the whole thing, is the tricky part.

“As a manager, there is nothing to match the satisfaction of seeing a kid coming through the system to play for his club, and going on to represent his country.

“I love it when that happens. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Premier-League-clubs-accused-trying-kill-off-football-feeder-system-of-lower-league-academies-article815899.html#ixzz1bGTN6bOF

[maudesfishnchips]

to many rules,

youth should stick with their local acadamy untill they turn pro.

more funding for the feeder clubs from the FA.

[jayrigg]

Really depressing news,

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Our rich and diverse football league will go to shambles.

Greed yet again rears its ugly head.



cheers,



Jay.

[Macmoish]

Guardian/Simon Burnton

Football League clubs concerned over plan to shake up academies

• Elite player performance plan's compensation formula at issue
• Fears only Premier League would benefit from end of tribunals

Representatives of the 72 Football League clubs are to vote on Thursday morning on a proposed revolution to the player academy system that would make it easier and cheaper for Premier League clubs to recruit young talent from lesser teams.

The proposed new elite player performance plan (EPPP) would replace the current tribunal system which asks each club to provide and justify their valuation of the player involved before deciding on a fee they consider fair.

Under the compensation formula the selling club would simply receive a set figure for each year the player has spent in their academy. For example, when Everton signed the 16-year-old defender Luke Garbutt from Leeds United in 2009 a tribunal ordered them to pay an initial £600,000; under the new system this would have been capped at a maximum of £131,000.

At the same time top clubs will be exempted from the current rules preventing them from signing under-16s who live more than 90 minutes' travelling distance away (or an hour for under-12s), allowing them to scout and sign players from anywhere in the country.

"If a club wants a player that badly then they pay what he's worth, and he goes," the director of a leading Football League academy told the Guardian. "But with the derisory compensation they're proposing I'm not sure the clubs will want all the players they're getting. They may just be casting the net."

The advantage of the plan would be to increase massively the amount of time top clubs spend with their young players, with enormous possible benefits for the players involved, the clubs holding their registrations and, potentially, for England's national team.

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, calls the EPPP "a supertanker that's very difficult to stop now", and his organisation has done its best to ensure this, incentivising those present to vote in favour by withholding part of its annual solidarity payment to the Football League – the £5.4m ring-fenced for youth development – since the summer and until the motion is passed.

Should no agreement be reached the maximum grant received by Football League clubs this season will be capped at £120,000 – a fraction of what many will have budgeted for. By contrast, should the proposals be ratified each of the 72 clubs can expect more generous grants from the start of next season.

The Premier League clubs approved the plans in June. The Football League has written to the chairmen of all its clubs to say that "having balanced the pros and cons of the offer the league's board has unanimously agreed to recommend these proposals to member clubs", and the feeling within the game is that most will concur. But many of those who work in player development are worried about the effect the plan is likely to have.

"Football League clubs have met on a regular basis to discuss it," the director of one highly regarded academy said. "Initially there wasn't enough information, now I just think there's a feeling of unrest, that this isn't good. But it's beyond our control now, it's almost been passed."
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/oct/19/football-league-academies

[Macmoish]

Guardian/Simon Burnton

Football League clubs fear eclipse under Premier League player plans
The Football League and Football Association back the elite player performance programme but it could hurt smaller clubs

After England's poor showing at the 2010 World Cup Alex Horne, the Football Association's newly appointed general secretary, was tasked with looking into why the nation has failed, despite the unrivalled success of the Premier League, to reliably produce players of international quality. In January he announced 25 proposals to improve the prospects of the national side, a list designed to tally with the Premier League's own plan, which was unveiled the following month.

A key issue, both bodies agreed, was the lack of time clubs have under current regulations to work with youngsters. When the Premier League published its elite player performance plan, it compared the time its clubs typically spend with players not just with their counterparts in Spain, France and Holland – where children typically receive at least 10 hours' coaching per week, around double the English average – but with this country's elite swimmers (15 hours), musicians (pupils at the Yehudi Menuhin Music School receive about 20 hours of tuition each week) and ballet dancers (25 hours per week).

"We are only allowed to coach [schoolboys] for an hour and a half ," said the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, in May. "Barcelona can coach every hour of the day if they want and that's a great advantage they have got. We hope that, in years to come, we have more time with young players, to teach them the basics, the technical ability, and to have the confidence to take the ball all the time."

The EPPP, which is to be voted on by the 72 League clubs on Thursday, will solve that problem, at least for Manchester United. As a category one academy, the time they spend with players would no longer be restricted, and neither would the choice of players – rules preventing signing young players living more than 90 minutes' travelling time away would be lifted. So clubs would be free to set up boarding schools for the best young talent they could find, regardless of where they came from.

That this would benefit the biggest clubs – and hopefully the England manager – appears obvious. But, speaking to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee earlier this year, the Football League chairman, Greg Clarke, said he was "frightened by the unintended consequences" of the EPPP. "Of course the top clubs will have an advantage, I accept that. But I would not want to see them … abuse it by undermining the economics of the smaller clubs. I think that would be bad for English football."

Though the EPPP will affect every league club, it was drawn up by members and employees of the Premier League. Just six teams were represented in discussions, among them Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. One academy director told the Guardian this week: "I think there's good things in the document. They want to improve coaches and spend more hours with the kids, and I think all of that makes sense. But they want all the best kids to be trained with the best clubs and in the best facilities, and this is going to see the end of some smaller clubs."

The key concern is the proposed scrapping of the football tribunal. Instead a set of payments would put a value on each year a player has spent at a club's academy. This would see initial fees significantly reduced, compared with those agreed under the existing system. Further payments would be triggered should the player take part in first-team football at the buying club; the selling club would also receive a percentage of future transfer fees.

Though the Premier League's latest offer is significantly more generous than its first, Clarke's concerns are echoed by many academies. But with the Premier League withholding money from Football League clubs until they accept the plan, and having made it clear that it will not improve its offer, the Football League board has recommended clubs vote in favour. The FA has endorsed the EPPP.

"The FA has been in consistent dialogue with the leagues regarding the proposals for future elite player development," a spokesman said.

"The FA is fully supportive of the plan and any improvements to the player development system."

In order to reach category one status, a club's academy must have an annual budget of more than £2.3m and at least 18 full-time employees, as well as excellent facilities – a set-up which most clubs outside the Premier League, and several within it, would be unable to support. Academies will also be judged on previous success, using criteria decided by the Premier League.

Many clubs have complained that, according to these criteria, the most successful recent graduates from English academies are a Catalan, Cesc Fábregas, and a German, Robert Huth, who were signed from foreign clubs at the age of 16. "Chelsea haven't brought anyone through into their first team since John Terry," one academy director told The Guardian. "They wouldn't score very highly, but they do if you start saying Robert Huth is home-grown. It can't be right.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/oct/19/premier-league-elite-player-performance

[Macmoish]

Just one "lower club" reaction

OLDHAM OFFICIAL SITE

NEW PLAN COULD COST LATICS MONEY
Posted on: Thu 20 Oct 2011

Latics stand to lose a considerable sum of money if Football League clubs today adopt the controversial Elite Player Performance Plan.

Chief Executive Alan Hardy was representing Latics at the Football League meeting in Walsall where the item headed the agenda.

The matter relates to solidarity payments the Premier League make to clubs in the Football League - Latics receive about £200,000 annually.

The Premier League are insisting Football League clubs spend more on the money developing players and also introduce a compensation mechanism in which they would pay less to clubs for young players.

Mr Hardy explained that if the EPPP is not adopted, Premier League clubs are threatening to withdraw solidarity payments which is a worry to cash-strapped clubs.

The Latics Chief Executive added the implementation of the EPPP would affect the Boundary Park.

He said: "We have done well selling young players so we would be affected by this proposal.

"Take Scott Spencer who we sold to Everton for £200,000. We would have received significantly less had the EPPP been in place."

Also on the agenda today is a report on artificial playing surfaces.

www.oldhamathletic.co.uk/page/NewsUpdate/0,,10337~2487861,00.html

[cpr]

Football league clubs should say keep your bribe, poke you £80k, we're voting against this.

It was diabolical when first mooted and suddenly it's upon us. This cannot be allowed to proceed.

[harlowranger]

Fry puts in his two pennys worth.


Minnows count the cost as academies rules change


Barry Fry has warned academies are facing wholesale closure after a controversial decision to scrap the transfer market for schoolboys.

Football League clubs have voted to abolish the tribunal that sets fees when clubs cannot agree a price for home-grown talents.

Greedy Premier League bosses had threatened to withhold annual £80,000 'solidarity' payments to clubs in the Championship and lower divisions if they did not agree to the changes.

The move was blasted by one prominent academy director, who told the Mirror: "I might as well drive a coachload of our kids to Chelsea and drop them off, to make it even easier for them.


"The Premier League's idea of solidarity is to put a gun to your head and demand a ransom. Letting them take over the academy system is like putting Dracula in charge of a hospital blood transfusion ward."

After the 72 League clubs voted 46-22 to accept the Premier League's blueprint for raising standards - the Elite Player Performance Plan - Peterborough director of football Fry also sounded a warning.

"What frightens me is that a lot of clubs might now pull out of having a youth system altogether," he said.

"Lower-league clubs will look at how much it costs to run their centres of excellence and think, 'If Premier League clubs can come along and nick our best young kids for peanuts, what is the point of investing in it?'

"We made around £6million from selling Matthew Etherington and Simon Davies to Tottenham and Luke Steele to Manchester United 10 years ago - but we would get nowhere near that amount under the new system.

"The Premier League wants everything - and they want it for nothing."

Only last week Chelsea agreed to pay MK Dons £1.5m, potentially rising to £2m, for 14-year-old prospect Seyi Ojo .

Under the EPPP, however, they would only have to pay a fixed tariff.

Dons manager Karl Robinson, who worked under Steve Heighway at Liverpool's acclaimed academy for six years, raged: "If we lose our youth players for nominal fees, how are we going to survive?

"I don't think it is fair. Are these kids going to play in the Premier League at 16 or 17, or are they better off playing first-team football at clubs like ours and learning their trade on the front line instead of disappearing in a big club's reserve squad?"

During a heated meeting at Walsall's Bescot stadium, Football League clubs reluctantly voted to introduce EPPP.

They issued a statement saying: "Following lengthy consideration, Football League clubs have voted to accept the Premier League's proposals.

"The League will now continue discussions with the Premier League on the implementation of the EPPP across professional football."

Under the new fixed-price arrangement, a selling club will be paid just £3,000 for every year of a player's development between the ages of nine and 11.

The fee per year from 12 to 16 will depend on the selling club's academy status - but ranges between £12,500 and £40,000.

The 90-minute rule, which currently states an academy player must live within an hour-and-a-half's drive of the club they play for, will also be scrapped.



Read more: www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Lower-league-clubs-fear-for-financial-future-after-reluctantly-accepting-change-in-youth-academy-rules-article816885.html#ixzz1bMRxxT7i
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[Macmoish]

Paul Fletcher/BBC Blog

Youth overhaul will damage football league

Paul Fletcher | 14:41 UK time, Thursday, 20 October 2011

On Thursday, Football League clubs voted in favour of proposals that could result in the Premier League picking up their best young talent for a fraction of what they currently pay.
There were 46 votes in favour, 22 against, three no-shows and one abstention.

I'm told it was a reluctant "yes" from many of the clubs, who felt they had no choice.

If they voted "no", the Premier League threatened to withdraw over £5m of funding that they give to lower league clubs each year for youth development.

It is all tied in with the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which will radically modernise youth development in England, introducing a four-tier academy system.

The new deal will see every club receive an increase in their funding for a guaranteed four-year period, with the amount determined by their academy status.

Against a background of a reduced television deal and an uncertain economic climate, most Football League clubs are understood to have welcomed the increase in funding - but Peterborough director of football Barry Fry told me the Premier League's threat felt like blackmail.

The Premier League is confident EPPP, which will be implemented for the start of the 2012-13 season, will ensure the best players are developed by the best coaches at clubs using state-of-the-art facilities. The idea is that it will help the most-talented players realise their potential.

Ultimately this will benefit not only the club that develops them but also the England team.

"This is a bigger step change than Howard Wilkinson's Charter for Quality," said a Premier League spokesman.

"That was an incredible piece of work, which everybody bought into. But that was a stake in the ground and everybody has marched past it now. The new plan is a great example of English football working together to raise standards across the board."

There is widespread support for many of the ideas and aspirations contained with EPPP at Football League level. I have spoken to chairmen, managers, academy directors and players. All of them believe the new system will succeed in many of its aims.


Manchester City's Joe Hart began his career at Shrewsbury and is now the national team's first-choice goalkeeper. Photo: Getty

But the insistence that the new set-up is combined with an overhaul of the tribunal system, currently used to determine a fee when clubs cannot reach agreement for the transfer of a home-grown player, has infuriated many in the Football League.

Two years ago, the Football League agreed to enter discussions about a new formula. This has bounced back and forth between the two bodies for most of 2011 but the Premier League has now made its final offer.

There will be a fixed tariff dependent on how long a player has been at the selling club. For example, the fee is fixed at £3,000-per-year for a player's development from nine to 11-years-old. The fee from 12 to 16 will depend on a club's academy status but will range from £12,500 to £40,000.

This will bring to an end Premier League clubs paying large fees for the best young talent in the Football League. Chelsea this week reportedly shelled out an initial £1.5m to MK Dons for 14-year-old Oluwaseyi Ojo. Under the new system they would be able to buy him for less than £150,000.

An academy director at a Championship club told me it was the flawed nature of the current tribunal system that forced Premier League clubs to pay a competitive price.

The Premier League argues the bolt-on amounts the selling club will receive if the player is a success at his new club will ensure it is a fair system.

But this is dependent on a player going on to establish himself at a top-flight club. The academy director I spoke to believes it will lead to a situation where Premier League clubs "hoover up" the best young players aged nine to 16 at lower league clubs.

It will be worth a top-flight club buying several young players for under £100,000 on the basis they can afford for several to fall by the wayside - as long as some succeed.

There is an argument this will most benefit top-flight clubs who currently do not have a successful record in youth development.

The academy director told me: "Do you think Manchester United are too bothered about EPPP? They already have a first-class system and this is probably just extra paperwork for them.

"It is clubs that don't work well who will be desperate to put it in place because it will make their lives easier."

He believes this will stunt the long-term development of players who have moved to a club where they suddenly find themselves a long way from the first team.


John Bostock moved from Crystal Palace to Tottenham after a tribunal set his fee, but has found first-team opportunites at White Hart Lane limited. Photo: Getty

A good example is John Bostock, who joined Crystal Palace as an eight-year old and made his first-team debut aged 15. He was controversially signed by Tottenham as a 16-year-old, with a tribunal setting an initial fee of £700,000, with a further £1.25m dependent on first-team appearances.

However, he has yet to make a Premier League appearance for Spurs and has been loaned out to Brentford and Hull, with his path to the first team blocked by seasoned professionals.

Under the new system we could see a lot of youngsters at top-flight clubs being loaned to lower leagues to gain first-team experience.

What's more, the changes could lead to a scenario where academy directors at Football League clubs will have to try to instigate an auction to force up the price if a top-flight club shows an interest in one of their younger players.

The academy director added: "If a Premier League club came in for one of my 12-year-olds and the tariff said I could only get £20,000, I would have to try to start a bidding war by trying to get other clubs interested in him.

"This would probably involve an agent - and I would have to try to persuade the player's parents to take the biggest offer."

Of the 72 Football League clubs, only Hereford and Morecambe do not currently have a youth development system. The changes are unlikely to lead to an immediate reduction in the number of academies because the new system actually increases the level of funding for clubs.

But the chairman of a League Two club told me that, further down the line, when the fixed period of extra funding has ended and lower league clubs are losing their best young players for next to nothing, many will decide to scrap their youth systems.

The academy director agrees. He added: "Youth systems at Championship clubs will survive because they will be able to cherry-pick from smaller clubs. But, for the likes of Barnet and Stevenage, I imagine it will be the end for them."

The Premier League itself is adamant that it is a fair system and the reforms are necessary. But they could cause a long-term problem that will transform the landscape of youth development in the Football League.

You can follow me throughout the season on Twitter: @paul__Fletcher
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/10/football_league_votes_in_favou.html#299200

[saphilip]

Ever wondered why the English national team has toally underachieved tournament after tournament? Well here's is one of your answers.

Simply put I cannot think of a better way for English football as a whole to commit mass suicide than this.

I think football in your country needs people in charge who can see the bigger picture and look further than their noses (and wallets).

[Macmoish]

So agree with you saphilip. Don't understand what they're doing. (And of course, that might be us as one of those clubs, in the near future)

GUARDIAN

Academy system set for overhaul after Football League clubs back plan

• Elite player performance plan to replace tribunal system
• Fears that lower league clubs will lose more young players

* Stuart James

Representatives of the 72 Football League clubs have voted in favour of an overhaul of the academy system that will make it easier and cheaper for Premier League clubs to recruit young talent.

Thursday's vote was passed by 46 to 22, with three no-shows and one abstention. The outcome was no surprise because the Premier League had withheld part of its annual solidarity payment to the Football League – £5.4m is set aside for youth development – pending the vote, meaning that many of the 72 clubs will have felt that they were backed into a corner.

The elite player performance plan (EPPP) will replace the tribunal system, which asks each club to justify its valuation of the player involved before it decides on a fee considered fair. This process was often problematic because of the contrast between what the selling club was demanding and how much the buying club was willing to pay, prompting some to believe that the new system, which will use a set formula to establish compensation fees, is a step in the right direction. Whether the smaller clubs will feel like that remains to be seen.

The new rules mean a selling club is paid £3,000 per year for every year of a player's development between the ages of nine and 11. The fee per year from 12 to 16 will range between £12,500 and £40,000. The top clubs will also be exempt from the rules preventing them from signing under-16s who live more than 90 minutes' travelling distance away (or an hour for under-12s), allowing them to scout and procure players from anywhere in the country.

Barry Fry, Peterborough's director of football, fears the changes will prompt some lower league clubs to "pull out of having a youth system altogether", although Greg Clarke, the Football League chairman, says that will not be the case. "We hope Football League clubs continue to retain and fill their first teams with top local talent," he said. "There's always a danger under the new scheme that larger clubs will be a bit more predatory. We hope we don't see that but I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that this is a major step forward for English football."

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/oct/20/academy-system-overhaul-football-league


GUARDIAN

Educate young players or we will be forever given footballing lessons

The gulf between Crewe Alexandra and Manchester United is emphasised by new rules about selling on young players

* Paul Hayward

Supporting the elite's right to grab the best young stars might sound like campaigning for Dracula to be appointed head of the national blood transfusion service, but in the understandable howl from many smaller clubs two issues have become confused. The Football League's right to life ought to be compatible with England's need to manufacture more footballers with the technical dexterity of Xavi Hernández, Mesut Ozil, Luka Modric or David Silva.

English football is the working-class Wimbledon, with Wembley as Centre Court: a spectacle of great opulence that fails year after year to produce players of world-class skill. The expectation lumped on Jack Wilshere and Phil Jones is the clearest evidence of barrenness in the most important field, where Spain, Germany and Holland have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of artists rather than artisans.

At first reading the Premier League's blitz on the 90-minute travelling time restriction and on compensation to smaller clubs was an asset-grab, backed up with blackmail – the withholding of part of its annual "solidarity payment", pending the Football League's vote on the proposed elite player performance plan (EPPP). Vote for us or starve, the tactic seemed to say.

The instinct to defend the 72 against the 20 is as legitimate as the cries of the 99% against the 1% in society and politics. Polarisation is our national story, and it should be resisted, in the economy and football. But the move to raise standards is legitimate, as we all know from watching England at World Cups. We can no longer lacerate the eternal quarter-finalists if we then deny that Spain and Germany are streets ahead in the coaching of schoolboy players.

An expert in Crewe Alexandra's finances made contact to say the EPPP would kill that great beacon club "within three years". Lavish transfers for under-16s are dead, to be replaced by annual compensation terms and additional payments based on first-team appearances and sell-on fees. The best lower league academies will retain category one status so long as they can stump up an annual budget of £2.3m and 18 full-time staff. Few will.

Ultimately this tussle has come about in the first place because the Premier League pulled away from the rest of football. Upstairs Downstairs is its unofficial motto. Plainly many elite clubs resent spending £1m on a 15-year-old who then fails to measure up. The pity is that some clubs are condemned to survive by trying to spot a local Messi and selling him to a top-20 operation.

This is a kind of poverty trap. The club sells the one good player to pay the wages of 10 ordinary ones. Its academy is not there to provide first-team heroes but to unearth a gem it can hawk. The board's mismanagement is concealed by the talent drain. Crystal Palace supporters have seen their club mishandled and many of their best youngsters auctioned off to pay the bills. There must be a better way.

These proposals – forced through by the Premier League but supported by the Football League and Football Association – lack imagination. There are all sorts of other ways for the 20 to support the 72 without overpaying for teenagers. The objective should be wealth redistribution – but not denying Manchester United or Chelsea the extra coaching hours they want on the training ground.

A couple of ideas: any player taken from a Football League club at 16 or under then discarded by that bigger team cannot be sold for a transfer fee back to the 72. That way, Championship, League One and League Two clubs will have access to free talent returning from the highest echelon. Equally when a youngster is seized the Premier League club is obliged to send on loan to that feeder club at least one player of reserve-team calibre or above. What Crystal Palace and Crewe want, naturally, is hard cash, and they should get it, through wealth redistribution, in many forms – not by asserting an automatic right to keep a boy until he can be sold for the best possible price.

"We are only allowed to coach [schoolboys] for an hour and a half a day. Barcelona can coach every hour of the day if they want and that's a great advantage they have got," Sir Alex Ferguson says. Most Premier League academies – and certainly the FA – are failing to match the standards of other European countries. So they have much to prove, before they start ordering Crewe to hand over the goods for £40,000 a year in compensation.

Somewhere in there, though, is a worthwhile aim: to educate the best young players as well as they are in those countries that send England packing at tournaments. If in doubt consider the panic over Wayne Rooney's three-match suspension for Euro 2012. There is an embarrassing dependence on one player.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/20/premier-league-academies

[ingham]

I propose a somewhat different system. Clubs with largely foreign talent eff off abroad into a Super League consisting of all 'elite big clubs'.

Under the present system, each of the tiny handful of big Clubs in each country (at most 3, say) is guaranteed to win every top trophy, ensuring 1 or 2 of them get some sort of 'major' trophy every season, to maintain the pretence of their being major players.

Stick them all in a league TOGETHER, and the Reals and Barcas, Uniteds and Bayerns would find themselves winning nothing, year in, year out. In a league of twenty, 1 would win and 19 would lose.

Don't wait for them to do it because they need the other Clubs in the English game - the Clubs they treat like dirt - to provide them with their 'victories' and their domestic 'success', so they won't propose anything of the sort.

They're not just terrified of relegation. They're terrified of real competition. That's why they have a 'Champions' league filled with the Clubs who DIDN'T win anything.

Without Clubs like ours, and the even bigger losers like Everton and Villa, Newcastle and Spurs, the Arsenals and Juves will be obliged to assume the mantle of Global Failure themselves, on TV every week, with monotonous regularity.

With the Football League and lesser premiership Clubs to give them a phoney aura of 'superiority' they can kid themselves, and go on borrowing against imaginary future triumphs until the plug is finally pulled.

We needn't blame them. The other Clubs and the other Leagues are to blame, for volunteering for doormat status, and for their own stupid, greedy, short-sighted policies.

Instead of remaining dignified and independent, and playing football to whatever standard they can AFFORD to play it, allowing the foreign players to wipe out all the native talent at the Big Brands - they aren't Clubs, so we might as well stop pretending they're anything other than labels - Clubs of our size got down on their knees and demanded to be treated even more like dirt than they were already.

And they want more! Please condescend to us. Please let us keep a few young players for a few months. Why? They'll take all the good ones anyway, if they feel like it.

Why are the smaller Clubs like QPR paying vast sums to players who lack even the most basic skills and who will NEVER earn enough to cover the the cost of their own wages. We don't bring through home-grown talent anyway, so why pretend. Talent isn't really a factor at a Club which just runs up another £10 million or £20 million of losses every year to cover up its own bankruptcy of ideas, know-how, creativity and experience.

We've asked for it, just as the once upon a time successful Clubs like Liverpool and Everton got drawn into a One Club Biggest Takes All 'premier' league called Manchester United, and now they've got it, those former 'giants' matter about as much as Crewe Alexandra do.

Let the 'big boys' hoover up all the 'promising' young talent for a few years, building ever growing stables of non-playing youngsters on vast wages who will never, ever be worth the money, and will quickly lose whatever talent they once had pottering around in the reserves.

We have problems of our own. The greedy losers who run small Clubs can't inflate the value of their own shareholding if they aren't vastly overvaluing the Club's potential by signing players, not of ever burgeoning talent, but just at ever more bloated prices.

These players aren't overperforming, they're merely overpaid. Borrowing money to pay inflated wages doesn't get us better players, just ensures we pay more for the ordinary ones.

Maybe those times are coming to an end, at last. I don't know.

Maybe the logic of the pathetic 'premier' League is starting to unravel, with the owners of the big Clubs starting to pocket the TV money themselves, directly, as 'fees'.

Why? Because the Clubs are profitable and successful? Doesn't look like it. Or is it because the golden goose has already been swallowed up by the fatted calf and nothing is left to gulp down except the prodigal son himself.

Me ne frego! (As Musso's Blackshirts used to say).

[Hogan]

Ingham i agree that so called super clubs should go and form their own elite european leage, open only by invitation. Then let the rest of us have a fair competitive league system with relegation and promotion and where the smaller clubs lower down are treated fairly and as an equal member. I dont think it would be long before some of them want to come running back, as they would no longer be the super elite 'winners' they thought they were.

[ingham]

Yes, I think they might well come running back, Hogan.

They've confused talent and money. Spending can increase by billions a season for every Club, and there will still only be one major domestic title and one major European title, the only real money-spinners.

Their financial incontinence won't be resolved by punishing Clubs like ours. No matter how few of them there are, how elite, or how coddled with no-relegation competitions, someone will win, the others will lose.

They can save money on transfer fees, but spending isn't an absolute thing, a question of spending £10 million or £100 million, it's a question of spending £10 million or £100 million MORE than your rivals.

With each of your rivals obliged to spend that much more than you are.

The Clubs with the talent that wins things earn the money to fund future success from past successes.

The rest bridge the gulf between their own lack of talent and the level of success they desire by spending money they haven't yet earned. With predictable results. Their need to spend is directly related to an absence of the required talent, so their expenditure is almost invariably misdirected and ineffectual.

So the cost of failure at the Chelseas increases in proportion to the value of success at the Uniteds. As the respective number of title successes at either Club demonstrates.

So the winners garner ever more prestige - vital to 'brands'.

God knows how Chelsea would cope in a Super League, if they were even invited, but someone must prop up all the others, mustn't they?