Is there any point to our Academy?

[jayfox26]

2 hours ago, smudgerfox said:

You think a "tear it up" season by a 19/20 yo in League One is going to raise Chilwell/Barnes type of money? 

The fact we are in league one is because we have a dreadful owner and a terrible board. Its nothing to do with the academy. The fee we got for Monga or any other player is nothing to do with the academy. That again falls onto one our useless board members, John Rudkin. However £10m isnt that bad. Monga has done very little yet at 1st team level, but he is very young and clearly has raw talent. If we were still in the prem, or even a top championship side, and/or had a decent financial situation, then we could potentially have pushed for more money. 

[Jattdogg]

On 04/07/2026 at 03:22, 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....

Write an open letter to the overlords at KP.

[MrsJohnMurphy]

21 hours ago, smudgerfox said:

Chsrlie Methven estimated it at £40m on Where's the Money Gone podcast. But even if he's completely wrong and it's £10m - that means Monga has paid for Seagrave for one year.And that assumes we see all of that £10m straight away without strings.

And what do we do next year if we have no red hot generational talent to sell for £10m?
I'm struggling to see how it amounts to a viable business model..

and how much would staying at Belvoir Drive cost us? 3-4 million? we don't get a training ground for free you know

[ACF]

11 hours ago, BKLFox said:

Is it just our academy this is aimed at or ALL academies?

I ask because haven’t Man C, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man U all spent in the region of £1bn on transfers in the past 2 windows alone, could throw Villa, Spurs in also as they have/are spending huge sums,  so also not filling squads full of 17yrs old straight out their factories.

 

Then look at the other 13 teams in the premier how many of them regularly bring a young lad through and how many, 1, 2, 3 a season, 1 or 2 every other season 🤷‍♂️ 

 

They have loads out on loan but how many actually make it at the parent club & at the ages we seem to want to fast track them in?

Manchester City have made £250m from academy sales over the last 5 seasons.

Liverpool have made over £200m since 2020 from players who played at youth level.

 

Manchester United, £193m. 
 

Chelsea’s is the third most profitable in the world over the last decade, behind Benfica and Ajax.

 

Selling homegrown players funds the rest of the transfer business to bring in stars. They are no different to any other club, besides their players being viewed as more valuable. 

[Stadt]

8 hours ago, ACF said:

Manchester City have made £250m from academy sales over the last 5 seasons.

Liverpool have made over £200m since 2020 from players who played at youth level.

 

Manchester United, £193m. 
 

Chelsea’s is the third most profitable in the world over the last decade, behind Benfica and Ajax.

 

Selling homegrown players funds the rest of the transfer business to bring in stars. They are no different to any other club, besides their players being viewed as more valuable. 

We've made about £150m since 2020 if you include Sowah. That should have been an incredible amount of money to reinvest but instead it's just paid the wages of a bloated, shit squad Rudkin hasn't been bothered or wanted to shift.

[dannythefox]

Our academy has made a fortune of the years that’s what’s it’s for sadly but hopefully we get a few seasons out of them before they go. Monga was always going to leave even though he’d probably be better off staying for a couple of seasons for his development. 

[urban fox]

Whether he makes it or not, will be his willingness to learn and be coached.

Plenty of youngsters with "raw talent" don't live up to their promise. The ability to do as you are told, play to the system etc, is what counts. It is a team game, and you have to do your job, but know when to use a bit of expression too.

Hopefully he has the right mindset and develops into a top class player.

[The Doctor]

On 04/07/2026 at 11:32, smudgerfox said:

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? 

Until Cooper happened, we had something like a 7 year run of at least one academy graduate in every match day squad. While we don't give enough of a pathway for a lot of our academy players, it has absolutely been producing first team players for us. The problem has been that it doesn't produce a full starting line up, and we've got clowns wasting money on the rest of the squad

[Chelmofox]

On 04/07/2026 at 11:32, smudgerfox said:

The point is £10-million will barely pay for the investment we've made in the player from an early age.......

Are you seriously telling every academy player cumulatively costs £10m up until the age of 16?

[Gamble92]

If you can keep your head when all around you are in PSR problems 

If you can be a very small man who only shows up to the last couple of games 

If you can play Polo when your club is crumbling before your very eyes 

If you can employ the biggest waste of space of a director of football the world has ever seen

And ignore every protest and every statistical evidence presented to you 

You can own Leicester City 

And everything in the megastore 

And what's more 

You'll be a KPFC fan

My son

Edited 6 July by Gamble92

[ACF]

9 hours ago, Stadt said:

We've made about £150m since 2020 if you include Sowah. That should have been an incredible amount of money to reinvest but instead it's just paid the wages of a bloated, shit squad Rudkin hasn't been bothered or wanted to shift.

Poor recruitment, which also blocked pathways for younger players to continue that £ pipeline when we desperately needed it.

 

 

[Chrysalis]

On 06/07/2026 at 05:20, ACF said:

Manchester City have made £250m from academy sales over the last 5 seasons.

Liverpool have made over £200m since 2020 from players who played at youth level.

 

Manchester United, £193m. 
 

Chelsea’s is the third most profitable in the world over the last decade, behind Benfica and Ajax.

 

Selling homegrown players funds the rest of the transfer business to bring in stars. They are no different to any other club, besides their players being viewed as more valuable. 

These are big 6 clubs in the EPL, who can actually buy hungry players in their prime.
Ourselves should be filling the first team with academy graduates, and instead getting rid of all our ex EPL high salary players.

What we witnessing now is gross mismanagement of squad resources.

Its also clear football as a whole has a problem if academies are just being used as factories for profit on player trading.

As I said last month, we not going to see a squad overhaul, most of the squad who arent out of contract will stay, and we will sell players like fatawa and our best academy players to fund the wage bill and new bad incoming signings.  I even see another league one club has taken on one of our academy players, we in the same league.  Get rid of winks instead.

Edited 7 July by Chrysalis

[MPH]

[ACF]

4 hours ago, Chrysalis said:

These are big 6 clubs in the EPL, who can actually buy hungry players in their prime.
Ourselves should be filling the first team with academy graduates, and instead getting rid of all our ex EPL high salary players.

What we witnessing now is gross mismanagement of squad resources.

Its also clear football as a whole has a problem if academies are just being used as factories for profit on player trading.

As I said last month, we not going to see a squad overhaul, most of the squad who arent out of contract will stay, and we will sell players like fatawa and our best academy players to fund the wage bill and new bad incoming signings.  I even see another league one club has taken on one of our academy players, we in the same league.  Get rid of winks instead.

No arguments here about squad mismanagement mate, I was just pointing out that selling academy prospects is something every team does, and have done well before PSR, so there is a point to our academy.

 

We’ve also had academy graduates in our team for years and years and years. Just because they’re academy graduates doesn’t mean they’re part of the squad mismanagement, I’m sure most of use would like us to sell Hamza and Thomas but their contracts will be fairly big.
 

I don’t think it’s a case of just “sell Winks instead”, the mismanagement you alluded to means he’s paid too much and nobody wants him. We can only sell players other team value.

[EastAnglianFox]

Regarding Seagrave, I do wonder how many more years we are going to be able to cling on to it being seen as one of the best facilities in the UK / Europe.

 

A couple of seasons of it being under staffed and neglected whilst others in the country continue to develop then we won’t even have this as a glimmer of hope 

 

 

[Jobyfox]

The way I feel about LCFC at the moment I think the title of this thread is three words too long