Academy costs roughly £1 million to run every year

More than paid back today. Well done Mr.Cryne for investing in the running of youth development and keeping the academy status as high as possible. I don't think anyone can question the point of the academy now.

 

Beg to differ but how long have we have the academy? Let's be generous and say 10 years @ £1m per year and the return is £10m from John Stones and we have produced maybe two players of note. Did alright without it from what I remember.

 

£1 million from Mason Holgate plus the sell on clause. 1.2 million for Jacob Butterfield. 200k for Danny Rose. Plus all the contribution from academy players that will have saved us money for example Rose's goals in the Championship that eventually kept us up another year. We have got a bigger return than 10 million.

It depends what you consider a 'player of note'. Digby, Rose, RNL, Oates & others may not have made us millions or gone on to be world class but they gave a good service to the club and are now established football league players.

 

Digby 11 starts
Rose 4 starts
RNL 11 starts
Oates 0 starts

Not the greatest of examples

 

Without the academy

McCarthey
Hirst
Speedie
Tiler
Agnew

Different times I know but still interesting. I think we would produce just as many home grown players without the great expense.

 

Look at the impact Rose made off the bench, a goal in the FA Cup 3rd round to get us through & a last minute equalizer at Ipswich. Reuben kept us up with his tremendous performances against Hull & Huddersfield. Digby made plenty of sub appearances and has serious potential as a CB under MM. Oates was a useful sub.

You know what I'm saying, even the players that won't go onto be England greats like Holgate & Stones have still being worth developing. That Templeton goal from last season that killed off Blackpool could be huge for us in the long term.

 

Doncaster & Bradford don't spend any money on their academies. Look what happens... Doncaster lad Mason Holgate chooses to come to Barnsley and Rovers miss out on a very good player and some serious money. Dylan Henry can't develop as he wants at Bradford so he leaves to come to Barnsley.

Having an Academy with a good rep and high status is more than worth while. Who is to say John Stones wouldn't have gone to Wednesday if we didn't have a proper academy? In fact I'm pretty sure John & any other promising local lads would snub us for other clubs if we didn't have a good academy.

 

I know what you're saying, but picking up Huddersfield Reds example, in the 80s and 90s we produced a huge amount of our own grown talent.

Add the likes of Mark Robinson to the promotion group

Moses, Eaden, Watson, Liddell. We used to do pretty well.

I think we should have an academy, but when you look at what we've brought through... who was the last homegrown player to play 50 games for us? Not sure who it was, Robbie Williams maybe?

Glad to see the Academy is clearly being looked at with more rigour.

 

Modern day football is different I'm afraid. Like I said without a reputable academy local lads & talent from other clubs like Elliot Kebbie would simply snub us.

 

Which is why I think we should have an academy. But as Patrick and Hecky said at the Q&A, the set up wasn't right. if the strategy is to succeed, we have to produce players that can play 100 games or more for us, or generate significant interest and sell on fees.

It has to be a net contributor to our budget most years, not a financial drain on what is otherwise one of the smallest budgets in the championship.

 

The academy is just a name really. We always had a youth programme just like every other club in the land has and it's always cost money. It's not like coaches demand a wage now but before it was called an academy they worked for free. It's not like we had groundsmen tending to the pitches free of charge before or that the under 21s were on zero hour contracts signing for us and playing for free.

Sure the costs may be higher since the redevelopment but the idea that it costs £1m to rub now and zero to run prior to the name change is rubbish. It always cost money, it just costs more now.

Then there's the argument that we've only sold a couple of players from the academy, we have yes but we've also saved a hell of a lot of money on transfer fees. George smith came free of charge on low wages last season because he was from the academy, you can knock the difference in wages between him and a 'proper' signing off the £1m, then you can knock the transfer fee off too. Go back over the years and that's a hell of a lot of money saved.

Next benefit is that the first team use the academy facilities, it isn't purely for youth, its our training complex. What benefit has the first team had very the years of training on top quality pitches with everything next o the ground? He many players have we tempted to sign because of the training facilities? I've heard countless new signings comment that the facilities here are second to none.

Consider all the factors above

If you pretend that the benefit to the first team of training there is worth £200k a year
That the benefit to being able to lure better players is worth £100k
That the original running cost was £200k
That the saving on transfer fees for players coming IN to the first team is £100k
That the saving on wages from players coming in to the first team is £50k

Then suddenly you're seeing more and more value for money than simply £1m all encompassing cost for running the training facilities . Of course the figures above are imaginary but just give an idea

 

In its current guise, we've had the academy for about 17 years at least.

It's value for money could be argued, maybe on fees received it doesn't look particularly good business but it's certainly given us players who were more than worthy of a place on the bench and a few first team chances so it saved us bringing players in on potentially bigger contracts...maybe there were a few youngsters who should have been given more of a chance at crucial times in their development, particularly when you think of the 'dead fish eyes' squad of a few seasons ago.


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I am not sure what costs are covered within the £1m per year quoted. The academy takes on young footballers from the age of 8. That does not mean that an 8 year old will go right through the various age groups and appear as a first team ready footballer at the age of 18 though. Many fall beside the wayside and fail to make the grade. Equally, many players come in from other academies later in their education. For example, Jacob Butterfield was born in Bradford, was educated at Manchester United academy until the age of 16, when he did not make the grade, allowing BFC to pick him up for the final 2 years of his academy education. When I used to watch the academy play, there were usually no more than 6 players from each age group in the under 18 team, that is 6 players under 18 and 6 players under 17. The maximum that were offered professional contracts in any year was 3, and the minimum was 0. Usually just 1 or 2 were offered contracts and so the cost of running the academy is divided by say 1.5 or about £666,000 per graduate.

But the cost of getting a player ready for the first team does not stop there, because most players who leave the academy are not ready for first team football, and many will fail to make the grade over the 2 years of their first contract. Now they are being paid to play and to continue their education, and now they will be playing in the under 21 team. The cost of each individual continues to rise. After another 2 years, there may only be an average of 1 player left from those who graduated from the academy 2 years earlier and the cost of his academy education has therefore risen to £1m plus the time that has been spent on him since by the under 21 management team, and do not forget his wages.

Do not get me wrong, I think that all employers should be spending money on training their staff. In my view, it is a fundamental tenet of business that they educate. However, the payback of all that training is very hard to justify, and that is particularly true for young footballers. A club with very limited financial resources like Barnsley is hard pushed to justify the cost of the academy when young players can be picked up from other academies at a fraction of the cost compared to our own, very limited success. There is a temptation to say that everything well because we have had a windfall from the sale of John Stones, but the academy must be judged on its merits long term, and I am not sure it passes the test.

 

Eden.
Moses.
Morgan.
Watson.
?

 

You missed my other post which lists all those.

Weren't they "pre Academy"? Certainly youth dev, but I'm unsure as to what the costs of our old structures were before we gained Academy status.

 

They would have been lost though if other academy's had been as prominent then and we didn't have one.
We'd have been in the same boat as Donny with promising players going to leeds,weds,utd etc.
We need an attraction and with what's happened recently I bet not many promising young lads would turn their noses up at us now.

 

I have a feeling our stock is rising generally. Not just with players and the environment we're creating, but the media seems to be a bit more positive too.

And with being in the championship again and having had two winning days at Wembley, it creates a positive profile we've struggled to create otherwise. That must be more attractive to players than when we were clinging on grimly year after year.

 

You can't just look at the academy in terms of players transferred. What about the games academy lads have played. What about the fact that the academy facilities are used by the first team.

 

Lets not forget the saving that playing academy lads saves in transfer fees/wages!

If Bree plays 40 games this season. Thats (on George Williams wages) £50-60k on wages and a probable 100-250k transfer fee. Thats probably on 2-3 years wether the replacement player even plays 1 minute for us. Times that up by 2-3 players and it soon equates to value for money.

 

They were products of the Eric Winstanley school of football. Plus Tiler, Liddell, Jones. Emphasises the value of good coaches not just facilities I guess.

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