- Jul 7, 2012
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If we're going to be that picky then Kane's been with us for far longer than the new training ground which was only completed in 2012. Kane joined us in 2004 I think. If it weren't for Poch believing in him it was highly likely that he would've been playing for someone else. But that's besides the point.
What I'm trying to say is that our academy seems to have lost it's way similar to how we've forgotten to do succession planning for the first team. We seem to be resting on our laurels (in players such as Kane, Mason, Bentaleb, Winks - all of whom were with us prior to the new training ground) and facilities rather than attracting potential talent. Again my earlier statement was about the over emphasis on the facilities rather than the personnel.
Right so a couple of things with this...
We didn't build the training ground to attract players to the club - a training ground won't do that, wages do that. We built the training ground and invested in the academy to improve and develop players therefore our investment in infrastructure isn't meaningless because the players have a far better environment (facilities/coaches) to improve. So whether Kane was signed before the academy was built is neither here nor there because like many players it has helped aid his improvement to the first team and become the player that he is.
Whether we have youth players ready to break into the first team right now is highly irrelevant because we didn't build the academy solely for now, we also invested to help bring players through in the past such as Mason, Bentaleb, Carroll, Townsend, CCV, Onomah, Edwards, Livermore and players in the future. Not all players are going to make it into the first team - this is the reality of the situation. If, then we sell those players who eventually don't quite make it with us then the investment has come to fruition because we've made our money back on them and then some. Unfortunately we're not going to produce fairy tale stories such as La Masia or Ajax Academy where we constantly churn our potential world class players - it doesn't work like that.
If you cite Chelsea and Man City having the best youth academies in the country which I'm not disagreeing but the reason why they have the best academies in the country is down to one thing - money. They have setup scouting systems all over the UK and Europe and the money they pay means that they can attract young players to their club and have the monopoly on the market. This is something we cannot compete with because we don't have the money to give young players and their families ridiculous incentives and high wages.
The point I'm making is that there is a huge purpose of the academy and it's an undoubted success because of the players it has aided in turn for profit or who we currently have in our team who have benefited from the solid infrastructure in place, just because we don't have players on the verge of first team football doesn't mean that the project hasn't gone to plan, we have already reaped the benefits of that it brings and we look forward to more success stories in the future.