Post by QPR Report on Dec 22, 2008 9:02:29 GMT
This was our then CEO, Mark Devlin talking about youth development - four years ago.
From a QPRnet Q&A from 2004
QPRnet.com: So the new position is that effectively a Chief Scout for youth players?
MD: More or less yes, we are very concerned that we really get no kids from this area at all and that this has been happening for years now. How many kids from the White City do we ever get, or from Harlesden and Willesden and places like that. We know there is plenty of raw football talent out there but it all seems to be buggering off to Fulham, Chelsea or Arsenal. Something has been inherently wrong with our youth recruitment policy and operation.
We want to make the personnel accountable as well. You ask, “Who was the person that spotted such and such”, and I guarantee you that at least three people will claim they were involved in spotting him and getting him signed to a pro side. So we are putting in place a system so we can review how good our scouts are and if they are not good enough then regrettably you have to let them go and bring in people that have a better eye for the job.
It costs a lot of money to operate a Centre of Excellence, and you can go one of two ways. Either you can adopt the route that we are going down, or you can go down the route of saving the £250k it costs the club, after grants, and say to yourself, would that money be better off going to Olly?. Or maybe give Ian £150k and use £100k to go and nick players from Premiership Academies as Swindon have done recently. This is a gamble, but other teams have spent the money coaching them, then you can offer them a chance at your first team, normally on reasonable wages as they are young players.
We believe that a club like QPR has so much more to offer than a Chelsea or a Fulham. Sure, it must be lovely for a parent to think their boy can go and play for Chelsea, but unless he is world class he is not going to get a sniff of their first team because at some stage they will spend £20m importing the finished article. At QPR we have a lad called Shabazz Baidoo, who is still raw but he’s come from Arsenal and clearly has more chance here if he continues to improve. If he does he will have a shot at the first team, he was highly unlikely to get that at Arsenal other than the occasional cameo in the Carling Cup and that is the message we need to get across.
We have got to be able to recruit really good kids, look after them well, coach them properly and give them a chance at the end of it. If at the end of it they can play for the club and take the club forward, fantastic, if they play for the club and they are so outstanding that the club makes some money out of them, equally fantastic. If neither of those things happen then over the course of the years to come we will have to reassess the way the youth scheme operates.
It doesn’t help that we have more than one base. We operate out of the Acton training ground, Cranford and Brunel University, its fragmented and we are actively looking for one place to build a decent training ground that will house everyone from under nines up to the pro side and also have the under sixteen’s and eighteen’s playing their home games there on a Saturday. That’s what we want but we need the facilities and that is definitely not easy to find in West, or West of, London. ...
QPRnet.com: At the moment I think we’ve got a better standard of youth player than we have had for years, but what sort of timescale do you give it to see whether it is being successful or not?
MD: To be fair I think you have to look at it over the course of the next five years or so, not one or two years, and we may have to be a little more aggressive in the market place, which is why we are bringing in someone that can identify fifteen to sixteen year olds at Premiership clubs who maybe we can approach.
This guy has in depth knowledge of some of the Premiership’s young kids and what we would like to see is with his knowledge and with Joe Gallen’s leadership that turn those into players that we can bring across to QPR who will be knocking on the first team door within a couple of years. Slowly but surely that will filter all the way down to the under nine’s but it is that fifteen to sixteen year old age group that we need to bring in now. We’re looking for players who are pretty outstanding but don’t have a great deal of opportunities at their clubs.
[Full Devlin interview (from 2004) at QPR Net
www.qprnet.com/interviews/devlin.shtml
From a QPRnet Q&A from 2004
QPRnet.com: So the new position is that effectively a Chief Scout for youth players?
MD: More or less yes, we are very concerned that we really get no kids from this area at all and that this has been happening for years now. How many kids from the White City do we ever get, or from Harlesden and Willesden and places like that. We know there is plenty of raw football talent out there but it all seems to be buggering off to Fulham, Chelsea or Arsenal. Something has been inherently wrong with our youth recruitment policy and operation.
We want to make the personnel accountable as well. You ask, “Who was the person that spotted such and such”, and I guarantee you that at least three people will claim they were involved in spotting him and getting him signed to a pro side. So we are putting in place a system so we can review how good our scouts are and if they are not good enough then regrettably you have to let them go and bring in people that have a better eye for the job.
It costs a lot of money to operate a Centre of Excellence, and you can go one of two ways. Either you can adopt the route that we are going down, or you can go down the route of saving the £250k it costs the club, after grants, and say to yourself, would that money be better off going to Olly?. Or maybe give Ian £150k and use £100k to go and nick players from Premiership Academies as Swindon have done recently. This is a gamble, but other teams have spent the money coaching them, then you can offer them a chance at your first team, normally on reasonable wages as they are young players.
We believe that a club like QPR has so much more to offer than a Chelsea or a Fulham. Sure, it must be lovely for a parent to think their boy can go and play for Chelsea, but unless he is world class he is not going to get a sniff of their first team because at some stage they will spend £20m importing the finished article. At QPR we have a lad called Shabazz Baidoo, who is still raw but he’s come from Arsenal and clearly has more chance here if he continues to improve. If he does he will have a shot at the first team, he was highly unlikely to get that at Arsenal other than the occasional cameo in the Carling Cup and that is the message we need to get across.
We have got to be able to recruit really good kids, look after them well, coach them properly and give them a chance at the end of it. If at the end of it they can play for the club and take the club forward, fantastic, if they play for the club and they are so outstanding that the club makes some money out of them, equally fantastic. If neither of those things happen then over the course of the years to come we will have to reassess the way the youth scheme operates.
It doesn’t help that we have more than one base. We operate out of the Acton training ground, Cranford and Brunel University, its fragmented and we are actively looking for one place to build a decent training ground that will house everyone from under nines up to the pro side and also have the under sixteen’s and eighteen’s playing their home games there on a Saturday. That’s what we want but we need the facilities and that is definitely not easy to find in West, or West of, London. ...
QPRnet.com: At the moment I think we’ve got a better standard of youth player than we have had for years, but what sort of timescale do you give it to see whether it is being successful or not?
MD: To be fair I think you have to look at it over the course of the next five years or so, not one or two years, and we may have to be a little more aggressive in the market place, which is why we are bringing in someone that can identify fifteen to sixteen year olds at Premiership clubs who maybe we can approach.
This guy has in depth knowledge of some of the Premiership’s young kids and what we would like to see is with his knowledge and with Joe Gallen’s leadership that turn those into players that we can bring across to QPR who will be knocking on the first team door within a couple of years. Slowly but surely that will filter all the way down to the under nine’s but it is that fifteen to sixteen year old age group that we need to bring in now. We’re looking for players who are pretty outstanding but don’t have a great deal of opportunities at their clubs.
[Full Devlin interview (from 2004) at QPR Net
www.qprnet.com/interviews/devlin.shtml
