Moving The Training Ground

Quoted from Azimuth

Why not go one further and relocate the club to a far flung place more appealing to players, Manchester, London or even Ibiza.

Me thinks you’ve been drinking lager with no top 🤣🤣🤣

Quoted from toontown

Almost irrelevant because under the rules anybody who shows real promise at a young age can be picked up as a teenager for virtually nothing by a category 1 academy. They wouldn't stay at our club anyway and we'd have virtually no benefit.

Ah, y'see whilst I'm in favour of us potentially having the first team training away from the town itself this is exactly the type of thing we want to avoid in my view.

As frustrating as it is that Cat 1 clubs can just cherry pick up who they want from the likes of us, it's absolutely not a reason to abandon your youth system.  The youth system is, to my eyes, about more than seeing lads come through the system and either play 300 games for us or he sold for a small fortune.  Of course that's a very welcome output but having a vibrant youth system is very much about engaging with the local community.  There are huge benefits from linking your youth work to the local community, on the most basic level you're hooking kids in to the fabric of the club.

I think it's Brentford who've abandoned their youth system as they were fed up of getting cherry picked.  They reinvested the money into their more statistical approach to recruitment, which has coincided with their promotion to the Premier League.  That makes it difficult to really see if there's any downside to their abandonment of the youth set-up in term of young fans coming through the turnstiles as kids wanna see Premier League footy.   But if in, let's say, 4 years time, they drop off down the leagues I reckon they would see a big gap in an age bracket of people who don't engage with the club.  For a club like Town, that could be potentially fatal once that age group get to the point where they're able to attend and spend.

Of course, there's more to the youth set-up and community work than just having 20 lads a year on the books.  My disclaimer is that I've no idea what community work Brentford do, it could be that they've outstanding outreach work and they've already got year group after year group of kids foaming at the mouth.

Quoted from diehardmariner

Ah, y'see whilst I'm in favour of us potentially having the first team training away from the town itself this is exactly the type of thing we want to avoid in my view.

As frustrating as it is that Cat 1 clubs can just cherry pick up who they want from the likes of us, it's absolutely not a reason to abandon your youth system.  The youth system is, to my eyes, about more than seeing lads come through the system and either play 300 games for us or he sold for a small fortune.  Of course that's a very welcome output but having a vibrant youth system is very much about engaging with the local community.  There are huge benefits from linking your youth work to the local community, on the most basic level you're hooking kids in to the fabric of the club.

I think it's Brentford who've abandoned their youth system as they were fed up of getting cherry picked.  They reinvested the money into their more statistical approach to recruitment, which has coincided with their promotion to the Premier League.  That makes it difficult to really see if there's any downside to their abandonment of the youth set-up in term of young fans coming through the turnstiles as kids wanna see Premier League footy.   But if in, let's say, 4 years time, they drop off down the leagues I reckon they would see a big gap in an age bracket of people who don't engage with the club.  For a club like Town, that could be potentially fatal once that age group get to the point where they're able to attend and spend.

Of course, there's more to the youth set-up and community work than just having 20 lads a year on the books.  My disclaimer is that I've no idea what community work Brentford do, it could be that they've outstanding outreach work and they've already got year group after year group of kids foaming at the mouth.

although i see your point, its very different from town. Brentford obviously has all the conurbations of London and the southeast to pick and choose from. even then, the scraps regurgitated by the academies from the likes of Chelsea, arsenal, Tottenham et al would still be far better you'd imagine from what we could possibly hope for. Not only because of natural talent but because of the training  and rehab facilities, stadium, coaching staff etc etc etc . IF we were to find that 1 : 1000000 player, you'd imagine they would soon have their heads turned when the bigger clubs send their vultures in.

I honestly think that an academy is a must for the club and community as one and not just on the mens playing side. By all accounts the ladies set up within the club is very good. its not just the next generation of players we are trying to recruit, but the next wave of town fans too. Players need to be seen locally. school visits, youth clubs, community projects, in the shops, in the pubs and restaurants. the connection should be on familiar surroundings not annexed 100 miles away

Theres certainly no protection for small clubs with their youngsters, maybe its about time to put some new rules in that will stop them poaching from a club unless the club gets very good deals like add ons etc.

how many have been poached then never gone on with prem clubs? thousands. and out of them thousands a lot will have just jacked in the dream even tho they may have been stars at our level..

Its detroying small clubs rather than helping.  imagine our homegrown being poached like the Mooresm drinkell etc. where would the club be now, whar history would we have?