Huddersfield Town downgrading academy

From tier 2 to tier 4 apparently. Looking at it they've not had the success we have.

http://www.examiner.co.uk/sport/sport-opinion/huddersfield-towns-academy-restructure-short-13634273

Would anyone want Barnsley to follow suit?

 

It's a difficult question. A Tier 2 academy is a bit of a luxury for a club our side and the losses we have made generally stem from running it but if you take the bigger picture and see the development of young players and the improvement in isolating and development as similarly long term then it makes sense. The sales of Stones, Bree and Holgate will have covered all costs and losses since its inception and added a small profit. I'd say it's just starting to work well so on balance best to keep it unless the wolves really are at the door.

 

Emotionally, I am automatically behind the academy. Like JC says, it is responsible for Stones, Bree and Holgate and must be close to break even over it lifetime. Nevertheless, I believe that you have to set aside emotion, set aside the past, and look to the future. Whilst the academy has produced players in the past, the question remains whether it can do so in the future, and I am not so sure.

A second question concerns the investment. We invest £1m every year, but the payback has comes as irregular and unpredictable windfalls. Not only that, but it involves selling players to whom the fans have become emotionally attached. Is it better to have the certainty of the £1m per year to invest on a regular and ongoing basis, or is it better to go from boom to bust and back again.

Whether the academy is of a high standard or not is not the question. The question is whether it can continue to attract young boys with the talent and potential to become the next John Stones. Potential players decide where they are going to begin their potential careers at the age of 17. By that time, they have already played for 3 years and are already on the radar of scouts from higher up the pecking order. Barnsley hope to attract them to Oakwell by showing the lads around and telling them how good the academy is and promising them plenty of football. Even at the age of 18, the big clubs are promising significant wages, and I'm afraid that is bound to turn the head of any young player with talent. It means that Barnsley will miss out on the best talent and will hope to pick up the late developers.

Of course, having talent at 17 does not guarantee a star studded career at the top level, and there is a strong argument that players are getting too much, too soon. There will always be drop outs from the system, and players that are missed by the system. The question is whether the £1m that we spend on the academy every year would be better invested in picking up players who are spat out by top academies at the age of 20 or 21, or players from the lower leagues who were missed by everyone. We are a smaller club, and any investment by rich Americans is unlikely to change that in the long term. Smaller clubs have to adopt novel strategies. They have to be more clever in order to compete. Is the continued investment in the academy just down to a reluctance to look again at the best way of doing things. I don't know, but I would certainly be giving it a lot of thought over the next year or so if I were Billy Beane.

 

The quality coming out of the Academy can only be as good as the scouting network getting young lads in. Pigs ear and all that. The bests player I ever saw was a local lad, and yes I saw John Terry and the Senrab team in Junior tournaments, and he never got anywhere near our 1st team. A local Junior club I was with turned one lad away at 13. It wasn't me. I must admit the lad was pretty rubbish and he went on to make many 1st team appearances for the Reds. It certainly not easy producing players when you can buy the finished product from Europe for less than a UK born player.

 

I think if you think of the Academy as a resource to the club as a whole I think it is good value.
It's true we are not bringing masses of players through it as yet & maybe how we are running it is something for the new owners may be very interested in. They may have their own development coaches in mind. Who knows? Purely speculation.

 

For me. Fewer academies with further distance to travel is another nail in the coffin for working class players and community clubs. The football club, whilst a business, should still be rooted in its community and what more illustrates that then training local lads and lasses? No academy, means some players are bound not to get picked up. I'm more then happy for Huddersfield to close their tier 2 facility, it means we're more likely to pick up the kids.