Is there any point to our Academy?

[smudgerfox]

Monga gone. Cartwright gone. No doubt more to follow.

 

A generational talent in Monga sold for a fee that will pay a quarter of the annual cost of Seagrave..

 

All after years and years of investment in their footballing development....

[Fox92]

It's how it goes. We take from other clubs. Bigger clubs have always bought from smaller clubs.

[Adster]

8 minutes ago, smudgerfox said:

Monga gone. Cartwright gone. No doubt more to follow.

 

A generational talent in Monga sold for a fee that will pay a quarter of the annual cost of Seagrave..

 

All after years and years of investment in their footballing development....

Think about it another way. Ask yourself, isn't this the point of our academy? 

[SK3Blue]

Go back to the days of Gary Lineker, before the word academy was associated with Football. 800k from Everton was big money back then. Heskey to Liverpool is another. At one point we had a ‘he’s good let’s sell him’ policy. It’s nothing new at Leicester to sell our younger players on. 

[AjcW]

We'd be in even deeper shit than we are now without our academy  

 

Both went for less than they should have, but imagine our PSR mess without Barnes and Chilwell sales?

 

Monga sale will keep us afloat this season and allow us to get some free's/loans in

 

Be happy that we got to see the three of them play, in Barnes and Chilwell cases we got to see a lot of them! 

 

Most times the big teams raid an academy, fans will never have seen the player kick a ball!

 

As far as this season goes we're likely to see an awful lot of Page, Alves, Braybrooke, Aluko, Gray etc. If our academy hadn't produced those we'd have a first team squad of about 10 right now  

[davieG]

It's the natural world of football, players want to progress clubs want to survive.

 

We can hardly complain when we threw away the chance to be near the top of the football pyramid where we would be the ones taking the best players from down that pyramid and getting substantially more for our own Academy players.

 

 

 

[Corky]

The crap "pure profit" argument means this is gong to be more common, sadly. 

 

Unfortunately we sell our talent, often for less than we should, so we are able to keep paying the absolute wasters currently clogging up the first team squad. And it will not change with this regime.

[STEVIE B]

The Ajax business model is to sell on their young talent, have done so for years.

We're in a far worse position than they are. We don't really have much choice. 

[coolhandfox]

It doing it job, creating player to come in to first team and generating income.

 

Its probably the best functioning thing at the club.

[Le Renard]

Until the accountancy rules are changed to reflect real life, academies are going to be used as a means to generate profit on the balance sheet. I would imagine that if all clubs were to use rules that we do in everyday life, then they would be insolvent.  Come to think of it, most businesses would probably be bankrupt if they were to use the " every £ in, every £ out " rule.

[phoneticerror]

41 minutes ago, Adster said:

Think about it another way. Ask yourself, isn't this the point of our academy? 

This is exactly the point of our business model. Not just the academy, but we’ve always bought talent in young and sold for profit. The academy is no different.

[LCFCJohn]

Of course the academy is worthwhile. Players making the first team or being sold, where a small fee like Cartwright or a bigger fee like Monga will pay the actual academy set up, I.e category 1. Not all sales will be Chilwell, Barnes or KDH level. 
 

The bigger question is the training ground facilities. You don’t need something that costs that much to run to run a strong category 1 academy. And of course having the right staff to maximise it. Those are the two factors that are a problem, not the having an academy which is serving it’s purpose.

[dmayne7]

6 minutes ago, phoneticerror said:

This is exactly the point of our business model. Not just the academy, but we’ve always bought talent in young and sold for profit. The academy is no different.

We don't really have a business model, let's be honest.

 

And if we're actually being serious about the academy, if that was really the case, why do we have so few players who ever play 5-10 games (unlike a lot of clubs)? That's absolute business suicide in that case because just giving lads a handful of games at what was a PL club/club of our size, massively increases their value. Only got to look at how Monga was handled for see that's he's probably worth half of what he should have been. And we've onto just started getting a decent amount of players out on loan.

 

McAteer is a great example. A very average player sold for £10m+ simply because he played a few first team games for a biggish club. If we'd been able to do that more often and actually prioritise young players, I doubt we'd be in anything like the financial mess we are now.

[adejo92]

Academies are pretty much just breeding programmes for the big clubs.

 

The truth is, if you do manage to keep hold of an Academy prospect....they probably aint that good.

 

Any good youth prospect is snapped up by the top clubs.

[Brizzle Fox]

It's just the same as it's always been. There has always been a hierarchy in football.

 

That won't ever change, just a moving around of clubs below the established top tier.

 

Just so happens that we've just dropped down a few levels in the last few years.

[ALC Fox]

It's very unfortunate that possibly our strongest crop of youngsters is arriving at a time when the first team is at its lowest ebb in the club's history.

 

The pure profit element means that we'll sell both the ones we think aren't ready (Cartwright, although I personally wanted to see him given a chance) and the very best (Monga).

 

There will be interest in others, like Nelson, Page, Motsi etc. but hopefully our current level can help us finally integrate a few of these lads (Page, Braybrooke, Alves, Hutchinson, Otchere, Aluko, Gray, Ali, Motsi), send a few out on loan (maybe some of the above to join Briggs, and maybe the likes of Carr and Neale) to see how they develop and if they're likely to make our first team one day.

 

Unfortunately the academy is part of the 'business' and selling players who come through is as integral to its continuation as it is producing players for the first team. But we have a chance to do both this season.

Edited 9 hours ago by ALC Fox

[Ryy]

1 hour ago, smudgerfox said:

Monga gone. Cartwright gone. No doubt more to follow.

 

A generational talent in Monga sold for a fee that will pay a quarter of the annual cost of Seagrave..

 

All after years and years of investment in their footballing development....

🤣🤣 whole point of an academy is too hopefully produce enough talent to play then to sell. Chelsea makes a shit ton each year 

[Rubbersoul]

Basically every fan of a club that isn’t Man City or Chelsea will think this way. 
 

Academy players get poached and not all of them make it so clubs sell to raise money. 
 

I wanted to see him get a chance in pre season but Cartwright leaving isn’t too big of a deal. Out of all of them he was probably the one I wasn’t too fussed about going 

[Winstonthedog]

Seagrave was the ultimate training ground... to appeal to the better players and nurture the youth for the future .... not all will make the first team but at least a few should.... some will be sold on .... I don't really see any of this coming to fruition.... a lot depends on the manager ... does he want to promote youth or buy the finished article .... any youth with ambition will not be happy with the odd sit on the bench ... or being a permanent fixture in the u23s .... my question is .... are the training staff good enough to spot talent and bring it through to a first team professional with leicester or just enough to loan them out 

[STEVIE B]

I suppose the big clubs, generally, use their Academies to potentially help player's rise through age groups etc & go onto the 1st team squad. 

The rest see it as a way of making money on their better youngsters. 

Obviously that's a very simplified way of seeing it. 

[Poznan34]

2 hours ago, smudgerfox said:

A generational talent in Monga sold for a fee that will pay a quarter of the annual cost of Seagrave..

Pretty sure it doesn't cost £40m/year to run the training ground

[fox_up_north]

I work with clubs from League One down to lower steps of non league.

 

Yes, there is always a point to an academy

[HitchinFox]

2 hours ago, smudgerfox said:

Monga gone. Cartwright gone. No doubt more to follow.

 

A generational talent in Monga sold for a fee that will pay a quarter of the annual cost of Seagrave..

 

All after years and years of investment in their footballing development....

 

It's the other way around.

 

The academy is doing its job, providing talent. It's the rest of the set up that is failing.

 

If we'd still be a Premier League team - and had it been someone else than the current leadership doing the negotiating - I'm confident that the fee would've been more. Or even better, we might have been able to keep Monga for longer. 

 

 

 

 

[smudgerfox]

32 minutes ago, Poznan34 said:

Pretty sure it doesn't cost £40m/year to run the training ground

The point is £10-million will barely pay for the investment we've made in the player from an early age let alone contribute to the ongoing financial stability of the club as a whole. And that assumes Man City have put £10-million on the table - and not tied up some of it in appearances/caps incentives.

 

Money in/money out we must have made a loss on Cartwright..

 

So my point remains - if the Academy is not producing first team players for LCFC and we're just going to recruit from other clubs (presumably players who've developed at another Academy), then what exactly is the point? 

[LCFCCKEANO]

2 hours ago, AjcW said:

We'd be in even deeper shit than we are now without our academy  

 

Both went for less than they should have, but imagine our PSR mess without Barnes and Chilwell sales?

 

Monga sale will keep us afloat this season and allow us to get some free's/loans in

 

Be happy that we got to see the three of them play, in Barnes and Chilwell cases we got to see a lot of them! 

 

Most times the big teams raid an academy, fans will never have seen the player kick a ball!

 

As far as this season goes we're likely to see an awful lot of Page, Alves, Braybrooke, Aluko, Gray etc. If our academy hadn't produced those we'd have a first team squad of about 10 right now  

This, we’d be in this hole and we would’ve had to have found a winger and a LB during our good years, someone to do what KDH did in the in between, and would probably need an extra 7/8 signings this window- also if we do manage to rebuild ourselves anytime soon they’ll be the ones we sell for a profit so we can build our squad up, fully expect Gray/Page/Aluko/Joseph/Braybrooke/Motsi to get decent money over the next few years