Youth Develoment in England

[Tails]

Just working my way through Paul Fletcher's updated blog. Essentially he is reporting the reaction of the FL surrounding the Premier League's proposal to revamp the way in which they develop new players. Aside from the fact that I don't think its particularly well written, structured and has dove-tailed another issue regarding football tribunals, I'm intrigued as to why it appears that this is a Premier League initiative and not being spear-headed by the FA. Furthermore, it seems highly contentious that the Premier League can set the rules and boundaries regarding the new categories for academies and centres of excellence.

Whilst I want a review of England's youth development, the way in which this is unfolding is disturbing [but then we already know who wears the trousers in English Football].

Footnote: I assume Reading's own set up would fit between 2 [being optimistic] and 3 [realistic] out of the four categories.

[ZacNaloen]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher ... tml#283800

[Royal With Cheese]

I read the title of this thread and immediately thought of the EDL.

[ZacNaloen]

The best way to judge where we could end up under this scheme would be to know how many staff our academy currently has.

No way we can afford 2.5 million for a category one (presumably most of the cost of that is in lodging facilities, we use local volunteers atm iirc?).


It looks very much like the premier league looking after it's own though, I have no problem with the premier league having the best facilities, but having the ability to get the "best talent" at age 9 is well... greedy. That figure should be the same across all levels.

[roadrunner]

If this is what I read about in the sun earlier today then it would be seriously bad news for football league clubs.