Not trying to create a' told you so' type post here just a genuine serious question, Have your views changed or mellowed somewhat following the sale of John Stones and with other youngsters knocking on the first team door? Perhaps extra funding may be now be available for the Academy? Cheers.
we need to produce a John Stones every 5 years or so for the academy to pay for itself, we've produced Stones and Butterfield and RNL in the last 5 years. The price of becoming a Tier 2 academy is well worth it, especially when you think of the poor state of Yorkshire football - lack of premier league rivals.
I am a huge supporter of the academy in principle, but I was finding it harder and harder to justify its existence given the lack of a decent product. OK, we have now produced Butterfield and Stones and there are hopes that there may be others on the horizon, but what if we go another long period without success. Does it come back under review. To my mind, there are still a lot of questions about the club's ability to recruit the right talent, and about its ability to get the best out of what it has got. Those doubts are reinforced now that we are effectively a second class academy.
I defend the academy but years of costs and traning to produce a player who only ends up playing a handful of games for us before leaving isn't a very good return for us on the pitch. A £3m sale once in a blue moon, is that a good return off the field? I don't know, we'd have to know how much the costs for the academy have been since Stones joined the club to know that. My opinion is that the academy has always produced players good enough but the club hasn't shown enough faith in our own players in the past to play the kids, we've always prefered to pay to borrow an 18 year old from someone else than play our own 18 year old. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case anymore and we're giving a few of the kids a chance. Now we're left with the problem of poor leadership at the top meaning these players are sold too quickly for too little. If we get that sorted (new board needed) then the academy really can pay off.
It's hard to say whether players like Stones and Butterfield would still have come through under the old youth system. Quite probably, it did produce McCarthy, Hirst, Banks, Tiler, Agnew etc after all. I suppose with an Academy, you've got a bit better chance of attracting youngsters that might otherwise head off elsewhere. It didn't produce anyone of note for years though, and it may be just a blip that Butterfield and Stones came through and were sold for decent money. I guess most of the better youngsters will still be hoovered up by the bigger clubs, no different to older players in that respect. I reserve judgement on the current crop, as I haven't seen enough of them. Let's hope a few of them really come good and become first team regulars.
I don't know if I ever lambasted the academy, I don't think so, but I thought we were getting a poor return for our investment. I like the fact that we train young players, but it seemed to me we were producing far more youngsters and of better quality under the old system, before we had academy status and before we built the facilities. Stones and Butterfield are the obvious success stories from the academy, but I wish we could keep them for longer before selling them. If I were in charge I'd keep the academy, although I'd be hoping we produced players like Stones and Butterfield a bit more regularly.
I think the current batch of first team academy players are some of the first to benefit from spending their whole career in the Academy, I might be mistake but I think Butterfield was with us before the Academy was formed (?). The Academy has now been around long enough that we are finally starting to see a conveyor belt of young players that have benefited since joining at a young age. Stones joined the academy when he was 8 years old, so he has had 9 years training in the academy (his 10th year with us was in the first team). I could be wrong, I can't remember when the Academy started. We do seem to have more real potential now than I can remember, players such as Rose, Clark, Digby, RNL and now Oates are all on the brink of becoming regulars, most of them have already played. Fingers crossed there will be more to come.
Re: no problem with the Academy I'm not sure you can pin it all on one youth manager, as said Stones spent 9 years in the Academy from 2003, which means he was overseen by Ritchie, Davey and Branson.
Re: no problem with the Academy The beauty of an academy for me is that even if doesn;t produce your best players it should produce young players that can be used in the squad, meaning limited wages can then be invested in better players. If you take the examples of Stones, Rose, RNL and Digby (if he hadn;t been injured) then they will be on very low wages comparatively.
Thanks for the replies, Interesting indeed. I believe we should be doing all we can to tap into the potential football talent in and around Barnsley in particular, and further afield as well. Had we not had an Academy, John Stones may have well been picked up by one of the Dee darr clubs for example. Who knows , if Andy Rhodes hadn't left the Academy to go to Ipswich his son Jordan may have made it here.
