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Post by ohtobeatplainmoor on Oct 21, 2012 9:53:30 GMT
Dave, it should be an economic decision - but that doesn't mean that it should be on the immediate bottom-line. Our previous youth set-up was led by the esteemed (!) Richard Hancox, which of course was based on nepotism and penny-pinching of Batesonesque proportions! We now have a proper set of scouts / coaches and links with other coaching networks and educational establishments. I also believe that in Geoff Harrop that we have one of the most accomplished youth football development experts at this level, which is a massive coup.
Whilst the funding that we will receive for this set-up will be ring-fenced, there will also be the benefit to the club infrastructure as a whole. We improve the facilities, we expand the pool of coaching expertise and we also improve the reputation of the club as a whole within the footballing world.
We have two real prospects in the squad in Niall Thompson and (I know this is going to be spelled incorrectly!) Kyrtys MacKenzie. This is from the first generation that we Geoff Harrop has been working with - and I think things will get better and better.
If I was a parent and had a young son that had ambitions to be a professional footballer then three or four years ago there is no way that I would have seen the facilities that we had on offer and the fledgling infrastructure and chosen Torquay United as the place for him to make the best of the one chance that they will get. It takes time to establish these facilities and repair the damaged reputation. I think in three years we will have seen four or five real prospects come through the club. Like everything, it just takes time to do it right and with the money that we have.
I think that we are cutting the cloth accordingly. To compete as a professional football club with have to operate like one. The value that we will get from the new training facilities is that we can improve the players that we have at the club without having to dip into the loan market and develop the players of other clubs! How many times have we every had a really decent loanee in recent years? Dean Sturridge, Jason Roberts, Alan Lee, Ivar Ingermarssen, Richard Kell, Danny Hollands, Jordan Robertson and Adam Smith all spring to mind - but we never had any chance of signing any of these players and all of them were recalled. **EDIT** Alpine Joe makes some excellent points as to why it is so difficult to get decent quality loanees in down here. Without the sort of coaching and training infrastructure at the club then 'bigger' clubs will not even think about sending one of their young hopefulls down the M5 to train on a sloping pitch prone to flooding with two or three very stretched coaches to look after his development - a development which that parent club will have spent significant money just to get to the stage that they are at now.
To be honest, I'm not even slightly sure what the net cost to the club is of the youth set-up after all the grant funding that we receive, but I couldn't see it being unsustainable given the way the club carefully operates. I would be curious to know that, but appreciate that it is commercially sensitive.
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Dave
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Post by Dave on Oct 21, 2012 10:38:38 GMT
Dave, it should be an economic decision - but that doesn't mean that it should be on the immediate bottom-line. Our previous youth set-up was led by the esteemed (!) Richard Hancox, which of course was based on nepotism and penny-pinching of Batesonesque proportions! We now have a proper set of scouts / coaches and links with other coaching networks and educational establishments. I also believe that in Geoff Harrop that we have one of the most accomplished youth football development experts at this level, which is a massive coup. Whilst the funding that we will receive for this set-up will be ring-fenced, there will also be the benefit to the club infrastructure as a whole. We improve the facilities, we expand the pool of coaching expertise and we also improve the reputation of the club as a whole within the footballing world. We have two real prospects in the squad in Niall Thompson and (I know this is going to be spelled incorrectly!) Kyrtys MacKenzie. This is from the first generation that we Geoff Harrop has been working with - and I think things will get better and better. If I was a parent and had a young son that had ambitions to be a professional footballer then three or four years ago there is no way that I would have seen the facilities that we had on offer and the fledgling infrastructure and chosen Torquay United as the place for him to make the best of the one chance that they will get. It takes time to establish these facilities and repair the damaged reputation. I think in three years we will have seen four or five real prospects come through the club. Like everything, it just takes time to do it right and with the money that we have. I think that we are cutting the cloth accordingly. To compete as a professional football club with have to operate like one. The value that we will get from the new training facilities is that we can improve the players that we have at the club without having to dip into the loan market and develop the players of other clubs! How many times have we every had a really decent loanee in recent years? Dean Sturridge, Jason Roberts, Alan Lee, Ivar Ingermarssen, Richard Kell, Danny Hollands, Jordan Robertson and Adam Smith all spring to mind - but we never had any chance of signing any of these players and all of them were recalled. **EDIT** Alpine Joe makes some excellent points as to why it is so difficult to get decent quality loanees in down here. Without the sort of coaching and training infrastructure at the club then 'bigger' clubs will not even think about sending one of their young hopefulls down the M5 to train on a sloping pitch prone to flooding with two or three very stretched coaches to look after his development - a development which that parent club will have spent significant money just to get to the stage that they are at now. To be honest, I'm not even slightly sure what the net cost to the club is of the youth set-up after all the grant funding that we receive, but I couldn't see it being unsustainable given the way the club carefully operates. I would be curious to know that, but appreciate that it is commercially sensitive. An excellent post Otobe and one I can find nothing to disagree with. When I write posts like the one you have responded to, they may not contain my own thoughts and views and are written in a way asking questions in the hope of creating some good debate. |
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JamesB
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Post by JamesB on Oct 21, 2012 11:53:00 GMT
That is such an incredibly weak argument that it is laughable. The stages of development for young professional footballers are clearly different from player to player. If they are not developed enough to start, why are they considered part of the first team squad? Elsewhere, they would not be If we were a bigger club, we would consider Rice, Leadbitter, MacKenzie, Halpin, Baker, Yeoman, Artemi, MacKenzie and maybe even Thompson as our reserve team squad - they are reserves. That leaves us with a first team squad of 16-17 players, of which 2 are currently out with long term injuries. How can anyone say this is a big enough squad? We simply do not have the numbers You can talk about youth all day but as Dave quite rightly says, the vast majority of the time if we've made significantly money off youngsters they've been other teams' cast-offs - I can think of only about 3 exceptions. With EPPP coming in, it's going to be much harder to make any money off this, because the big teams will swoop in and take any decent kids for next-to-nothing. This is why most other teams are going in the opposite direction to us - lower league teams are likely to abandon academies over the next few years because it's not going to prove profitable. Hereford, Wycombe and Yeovil have binned theirs already. Even clubs like Palace, Watford and Crewe, who have made a living out of producing a string of very talented youngsters, are going to lose out, because the criteria for the EPPP academy rating system is biased in favour of the top clubs - Watford did have a category 1 academy but took the decision to downgrade it to a category 3 themselves It's all well and good moralising about having a good youth set-up in the same way it's nice to talk about having nice training facilities and the like. But we need the here-and-now sorted as well - because if we get relegated, all the planning for the future will need to be thrown in the bin anyway. I'm not saying we shouldn't have an academy, but I just don't see why Ling needs to give over a third of his desired 24-man squad over to players who he doesn't want to pick for one reason or another. That's not having a 24-man squad. That's having a 17-man squad |
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Post by ohtobeatplainmoor on Oct 21, 2012 12:46:09 GMT
You're talking about a totally different club. The youth system was pretty pathetic under the Bateson ownership - completely neglected and seen as a peripheral to the club.
I think that decisions that are being made to improve the club do have an impact on what we can do right now immediately on the pitch and we are restricted. All of it is part of the overall club strategy - but I think it will help improve the club immeasurably over the long term and help to a more stable set-up. This is a very similar approach to that taken by Exeter City (although lest we forget that they have a huge slice of fortune with their cup draw!) - who went from being in a more parlous state than ours to being within a whisker of the League One play-offs in several years due to the careful following on their long-term plan and sensible, progressive business decisions. Many of those players have come-through their youth set-up and have been schooled from a young age to play the sort of football that Paul Tisdale has instilling in his first team. Players like Seabourne, Moxey, Friend, Sercombe, Nicholls, Bennett and Frear did not appear out of thin air or through their Chairman's son running a shoe-string youth set-up.
Nathan Craig has started less than a dozen football league games - and I think that Eunan O'Kane took a significant time to move from playing the equivalent of non-league football to football league following his journey through the youth system to play regular league football with us. I think Nathan Craig will be fantastic once he has that experience of 50 league games behind him.
Personally, I have the slightest hunch that Martin Ling would take any steps that he could to improve the squad if he could. He knows what the budget is, he knows what other players and clubs are asking in terms of of wages to cover a loan and how we can, if possible, move to make any of those deals happen. I would love to see us sign a Jason Roberts or a Danny Hollands, but the law of averages says that we will sign another a Tristan Plummer, Jake Thomson, Tom Aldred or Ryan Gilligan. I would rather we were in a position to bring-in players that have achieved at higher levels - but as we have seen with players like Ian Morris, it doesn't necessarily equate to being better than other options out there.
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JamesB
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Post by JamesB on Oct 21, 2012 13:16:34 GMT
I would love to see us sign a Jason Roberts or a Danny Hollands, but the law of averages says that we will sign another a Tristan Plummer, Jake Thomson, Tom Aldred or Ryan Gilligan. But of those 4 players, only 1 of those (Plummer) was supposed to have been particularly bad, although I don't remember him playing all that match. Aldred never got a chance. Gilligan was merely OK. Thomson was good to start with but his impact tailed off and his ego got in the way In any case, it's not always about having someone who's particularly good. Bringing someone in would wake up the players we have. We don't have a particularly bad side - the players we have are capable of winning matches, as has been demonstrated already. But Bodin's clearly been coasting of late. Why? Well, his position is hardly under threat, is it? Bring someone in on loan who might threaten his position and he might start playing, which would probably be better Either way, you don't know what you're going to get until you try. And while Ling could of course have been making enquiries on loanees for a while and have just decided that none of them out there are good enough, the impression that I get is that he isn't trying to get someone. There are so many youngsters out there waiting for a chance, I'm sure there must be a few diamonds out there |
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Post by jmgull on Oct 21, 2012 15:10:37 GMT
If they are not developed enough to start, why are they considered part of the first team squad? Elsewhere, they would not be but I just don't see why Ling needs to give over a third of his desired 24-man squad over to players who he doesn't want to pick for one reason or another. That's not having a 24-man squad. That's having a 17-man squad James......for an intelligent lad, you are naive in the extreme of the realities of trying to run a professional football club in a footballing backwater such as Devon. Do you not think Ling and the board would love to have 24 "fit for purpose" established pros ready to call on, whenever Ling fancied resting some players or for suspensions/injuries. We have 17 not 24 because with the finances the club can generate that is all we can afford - the other 7 or so are "developing, might be" players, not costing the club much but there to call on if needed - being around the 17 "proper" pros, in training and on match days is thought to be beneficial to their development - that's how it is and how it always probably will be. Football isn't fair, other clubs can afford more than us - but hey, isn't that part of the fun about being a TUFC fan, being a glorious underdog - stop bleating like a premiership fan on 606 - some of your posts recently remind me of when we signed Billy Bodin. I came home from work to tell my Chelsea supporting (occasional gull  ) 12 yr old son of our great transfer coup. "Bodin?" he replied completely disinterested....."he's only a 59 on fifa" Please don't tell me that, like him, you really think that it's anything like real football! |
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petef
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Post by petef on Oct 21, 2012 16:36:51 GMT
I reckon with exception of our next opponents and Port Vale this one of the weakest divisions for a long long while with few above or around us have any sort of consistency to make me think otherwise.
Gillingham are odds on to walk this division and few teams appear to be able to muster any sort of competitive challenge. Tuesday will be the acid test for us and key as to how I judge our prospects for the rest of the season. If we are to mount any sort of challenge one or two of the squad who have been under performing and particularly slow off the mark at the start of games are going to have to pull their proverbial fingers out soon or our season just peter out. Its a big test and will reveal plenty and we will perhaps discover whether or not we are good enough as a squad but I reckon if we had last years squad intact in this years competition we would be up there with them.
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Post by jmgull on Oct 21, 2012 20:06:27 GMT
Watford did have a category 1 academy but took the decision to downgrade it to a category 3 themselves You're not quite correct here James......not picking on you but just to clarify the Watford situation... It was made clear to the club by The Premier League that their refusal to enter the fledgling Under 21 League for this season meant that they could not operate as either a Category 1 or Category 2 academy and that therefore their already published fixtures for under 9 to under 16 age groups would have to be torn up and replaced where there was room for them within the Football League Youth Alliance Programme as the Premier League would not include them in their Elite fixture programme as they had ever since it's inception 8 years ago. This meant that a new set of opponents appeared on their fixture list, some of whom had previously been operating as Centres of Excellence whilst the eight remaining free available dates open to Watford have been filled with mutually arranged fixtures against precisely the opponents they had just had taken away from them! Nothing else at Watford Academy has changed, the same number of hours devoted to coaching and education, the same tie up with Harefield Academy, an increased number of coaches, physios and sports scientists, still the best playing conditions at UCL London Colney bar none in the country to play on and the same level of budget. There is no "downgrade", all categories awarded this season are provisional and awarded on self audits submitted and are due for rectification by independent audit over the coming two year period. |
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JamesB
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Post by JamesB on Oct 21, 2012 20:49:51 GMT
We have 17 not 24 because with the finances the club can generate that is all we can afford I daren't mention money considering last time I did I was effectively told I didn't know what I was talking about, but given that it has been raised, I'll say what I said in the past - we have a smaller squad than last year, despite of all the money raised in the interim from the sales of Robertson, Olejnik, O'Kane and Ellis, not just in terms of transfer funds but also freed-up wages I don't believe that a squad the size of ours is the limit of what we can afford. Or at least if it is, someone should come out and say so. Because 1) that would mean we were pretty desperate and 2) it doesn't take a genius to realise we aren't going anywhere fast with a squad this size. Either Ling has to sign players or he has to admit we're not getting promoted this season |
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 21, 2012 21:00:35 GMT
Either Ling has to sign players or he has to admit we're not getting promoted this season I don't think there's a warchest sitting there tbh, James. I might be wrong, but I can't see how it's in the manager's interest to be not spending money just for the fun of it. And come off it, no club or manager is going to admit promotion is an impossibility in October! |
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JamesB
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Post by JamesB on Oct 21, 2012 21:26:40 GMT
Let's be realistic, though - we're not going to get promoted with a squad of 17. It might be technically possible but, equally, it's possible that Barnet could go up too - it's not feasible, though. The longer this goes on, the quicker fatigue will set in as it did last year, and the more likely we'll end up with more injuries. We've already lost 1 player for the season and another for at least 3 months. We might take the piss out of Di Canio for signing loads of players last year but it worked because Swindon ended the season the strongest (aside from Crewe, of course, who also had options)
Plenty was made a few weeks ago about how any team would be hit badly by a few injuries. But how many would be down to the bare bones after 2 injuries? And how many wouldn't be bringing someone in, instead choosing to "find the answers" in a squad that a quarter of which was previously deemed not good enough to compete for a place?
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Post by jmgull on Oct 21, 2012 21:59:23 GMT
Ok James....you win! We should spend like serial basket cases Swindon, we shouldn't use transfer income to build grandstands or training grounds - youth system........nah balls to it, Bateson had it right, who needs to try and build a club with a decent infrastructure, much better to spend it on journeymen pros that may or may not play in a bloated 1st team. Lets ignore the fact that 2500 attendances = 17 or so decent players for this level....  |
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JamesB
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Post by JamesB on Oct 21, 2012 22:52:37 GMT
Uh, no one said that we should go on a spending spree at all. And as I said, we had a bigger squad than this last year on the same gates, despite the fact that we made over £500,000 in transfer revenues this summer and got rid of three of our highest wage earners
You don't need to spend loads of money to have enough depth for genuine competition for places in League Two. Accrington's squad has more depth than ours at the moment despite having smaller gates, mainly because they have 5 loanees in their squad (and I doubt they're paying much for those). Stevenage have generally had smaller gates than us and have hardly spent any money on signing players of late, and yet they're battling for promotion to the Championship, having left us behind two years ago
No one's asking for a squad of 25 players competing for first team spots. That would be crazy and self-destructive. However, what we have right now clearly isn't enough and it will catch up with us
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rjdgull
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Post by rjdgull on Oct 21, 2012 23:02:50 GMT
Hmm, wasn't Olejnik's fee spread over three years i.e we have only got about £100k so far? Add Eunan's fee - £175k and that's it as Ellis's fee was spent on Bodin. So £275k less 150k on training ground and another chunk on grandstand doesn't make much of a warchest.....
We are still ahead on where we were last year in the league though.....
As for a squad of 17, must be a couple up from that used last year! ;D
I do suspect there is wriggle room in the budget but maybe best to save it for that all important run which could help us more if we get a similar situation as to last year?
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Post by stuartB on Oct 22, 2012 8:12:59 GMT
Hmm, wasn't Olejnik's fee spread over three years i.e we have only got about £100k so far? Add Eunan's fee - £175k and that's it as Ellis's fee was spent on Bodin. So £275k less 150k on training ground and another chunk on grandstand doesn't make much of a warchest..... We are still ahead on where we were last year in the league though..... As for a squad of 17, must be a couple up from that used last year! ;D I do suspect there is wriggle room in the budget but maybe best to save it for that all important run which could help us more if we get a similar situation as to last year? Ellis's fee wasn't spent on Bodin!! A very kindly lady gave us #50k towards that  |
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) 12 yr old son of our great transfer coup.
