A Lesson from Crawley | Quality over Quantity

This week Crawley Town announced that they would be closing their youth academy. In a statement from their CEO Michael Dunford he said “This has been an agonising decision to make but has been done in the interests of the club’s overall viability. We had hoped the scholarship programme would be sustainable but the reality is that it is very expensive and requires more financial resource than we can provide as a club at the moment.” It would appear that for Crawley a youth academy is nothing but a waste of time and resources, frankly a waste of money. Some have said this is a shame for English football, yet it may be just a case of reality for English football.

The EPPP has brought much indignation from many clubs and coaches. Too much this, too much that, not enough time to do this etc etc. Simply it has led to many excuses and complaints. And this is not just from lower league clubs but from Premier League also. Many don’t like being dictated to, the issue of being told how many hours they should be training their players has riled Spurs particularly. 

The audit however has been important for many clubs as it has been a way of improving structure, organisation and procedures. Academies have become professionalised. Yet some do not like this. For some it has been an easy way of earning a living from football yet the lack of quality was lacking. This has been found out through the EPPP audits.

A Premier League initiative

Many clubs have invested big money into becoming Category 1. Clubs like Leicester, Wolves, West Brom and Blackburn have all desperately sought to be Category 1, as a way to protect their best players as well as being able to attract others. West Brom in fact have already felt let down by the plan as they lost their most promising player in Yan Dhanda, a 14 year old to Liverpool who only had to pay £200k. 

Let’s be clear first off, the FA had nothing to do with this Performance Plan, it has come from the Premier League and that there tells you everything you need to know about the vision of the EPPP. Yet the Premier League, who initiated the EPPP did not envisage what would happen. 

When Howard Wilkinson wrote his Charter for Quality in 1997 he envisioned 10-12 world class academies developing the best players in the country. What occurred was the approval of 70+ academies/centre of excellences. The standard of coaching across the board was mediocre and the quality was diluted across all the clubs. Youth development had not achieved what it had wanted, it wasn’t elite development, but just ‘good’. English football therefore developed a lot of good players yet few great ones.

A pyramid of elite development

The EPPP was therefore written in order to change this. A tier system was introduced in order to make sure the best players rose to the top and played at the best environments, which had the best coaching and facilities. This time they sought to get it right, following on Wilkinson’s vision they would seek to achieve the 10-12 Cat 1 world class elite environments they sought. Or so they thought. 

At this time there are 26 Category 1 academies in the country, over double what they initially expected. Now some may say this is a good thing, if there are 26 world class environments for players then that is surely only a good thing. 

Well not for the Premier League or the Professional Gaming Board (who fund the EPPP). You see Cat 1 costs the clubs £1.25m and the PGB make up the other 50%. Cat 2 is £800k for the club and Cat 3 is aroud £200k. Cat 4 who don’t have a 9-16 programme is about £70k. Now if all of a sudden there are 12-14 Cat 1 academies which was not expected, that is £7-8m more from the budget which was not planned for. 

The desire was an elite group of Cat 1's with others like Sheff Utd happy to be Category 2 and recruit and develop ‘local’ talent. Yet more wanted to be Cat 1 and earned the right to be with their investment and facilities. This has become a worry for the PGB and for English academies, especially Cat 3 ones. 

As Cat 3 were audited last the reduced budget would point to a need to have less Cat 3 academies as to balance the budget out. Rumours of certain academies being offered more money to become Cat 4 status (only a youth team, no 9-16 programme). This has caused uproar and anger from many lower league Cat 3 academies. However the question is, why should it matter?

Mediocrity does not produce greatness

For all the anger directed at clubs like United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal it is evident that they are producing talented players who although may not play for these clubs will have a better chance to play professional football. Across all levels there are players who have come from these clubs playing professional football, they can't be dismissed as not being good for youth development. Ultimately they have the means to make sure their structures; recruitment, coaching, facilities, medical and even education are catered for. The EPPP has attempted to make sure this happens more and that talented players move into these elite environments to develop.

As for Cat 3, the reality is that many of these academies are not producers of talented footballers. The quality of facilities and recruitment is sub-standard as is the coaching for the most part. Unfortunately these environments do not help players develop to the levels required. Therefore it is very difficult for these clubs to develop players for the professional game. 

Surely it makes sense therefore that most of these become Category 4 academies. Simply they select those players released from the Cat 1 and 2 clubs at 16 years years. This process enables the players in the ‘system’ to remain and simply move down but remain competitive and in full time football.

The issue with Crawley Town are never going to have a steady stream of youth players coming through their system and it is completely understandable that instead of invest time and money in trying to make it happen they instead seek to focus on their senior side and look for players on free transfers or loan deals. They are just not in a place to develop young elite talent. And this is not a problem.

In the modern world our young players are competing with players all over the world and although the ruling allowing clubs to bring in foreign players at 16 years is worrying and needs addressing it is more concerning to think how far behind many our young players really are from most around the world. 

The EPPP has sought to address this by expecting more of academies who in many cases have been poorly ran and organised. If this is supposed to be an elite development environment that is must be that. Cutting corners or hiring poorly qualified staff is no longer good enough. And to make this work clubs need to spend money to bring in quality. The money is with the Premier League clubs and therefore we must put our trust in them to develop our future players. Yet 26 Cat 1 clubs is too much for a real elite environment.

Of course what this elitism brings is the feeling of clubs like West Brom, Wolves and Leicester to reduce their investment if it is not working, yet this what the Premier League and PGB will want. More clubs who have the philosophy of Sheff Utd who want to develop local talent and then the 10-12 elite academies who scout the nation for the best players. Will this work? It has more chance of succeeding than the previous initiative.

Still a need to bridge the gap

What is important for the development of these players however is a route and pathway for when they reach 17-21 years. The under 21 league is just not good enough to develop and prepare players for the senior step up and this is why ‘feeder clubs’ and ‘B’ sides need to be pushed and created. 

This link between youth and senior football must be bridged better in order to help our players go from good to great. This is why Cat 4 clubs and lower league sides must embrace their role in being the final piece to a players development. If Premier League sides pay these clubs then everyone becomes better for it and importantly our young English talent is getting the development required to bridge the gap.

Crawley are not showing how failed the EPPP is but seeing the realities of their situation and what the EPPP can help them with. They see the value in having players come to them at 18 years, understanding that it is almost pointless a task to see players emerge from 9-16 years. Some will say that is just lazy yet if they were serious about it they would not more investment than Cat 3 expects and would need a 10 year plan to make it viable. Many of these clubs simply don’t have the means or patience to make this a reality and therefore their 9-16 academy fails to offer what is required.

The EPPP has its critics yet this blog agrees with what it is trying to achieve. Ultimately we complain about a lack of quality players coming through the system and in fairness to this plan it is making academies realise how far behind in terms of structure and organisation they are compared to other nations. 

We know there has been some great work this past decade; Everton, Southampton, Crystal Palace, MK Dons, Crewe and now Fulham prove that we do have youth academies which ‘work’ outside of the ‘top’ clubs and it is these which need to be given the extra investment to make sure they continue to achieve these high results. 

Yet for many lower league academies it is almost a waste of time to invest so much money in developing 9-16 years old. There are some great youth developers out there yet the overall strucutre and investment from the majority of lower league clubs makes these 'academies' look more like glorified grassroots clubs.

This is not his is not accepting defeat but being realistic and being Cat 4 will allow the efforts and finance to put here instead of stretching resources across a system which simply won’t produce what is necessary. The EPPP is doing what it set out to do, reducing the quantity and improving the quality. I’m not sure what is wrong with that. 

The Whitehouse Address @The_W_Address

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