If my son had the talent of Gomez or Lookman then there is no way I would allow him to play at our Academy unless he had a good prospect of first team games and therefore a shop window for the bigger clubs. I know this is a sad reflection on CAFC but its reality. Payments to relegated premiership clubs next year could be as much as £100m - perhaps we all need to wake up a little.
3
Comments
Where I take issue with what Katrien said in Dublin is that simply promoting young players, providing "the future stars of the Premier League," should not be the sum total of our ambition. The ability to bring in and fully develop such players is dependent on the standing of our first team, and it gets harder to attract and keep quality players in the long run if the first team performs poorly. Short of maybe Crewe Alexandria, a club cannot simply be a conveyor belt for producing young talent, especially in our catchment area.
Poor attempt to make Miere look a visionary!
What you need with it is a winning mentality throughout the club, where football progression is core. That is what the current owners fail on.
Too many of these at the moment
If there were a few offers from academies I'd put Charlton above all others though. Partly because I am a fan and partly because we have the history of introducing these into the first team. Despite what some may feel you could do a lot worse than the Charlton academy
Shelvey, Solly, Wagstaff, Elliot, Randolph, Fortune, Parker, Konchesky, Newton, Rufus, Brown, Minto, Leaburn, Lee, Walsh, etc, etc, etc - all came through the ranks at Charlton and went on to have successful careers. None were prevented from leaving when they wanted to, and none were given away as soon as they made it into the first team, unlike Gomez and probably Lookman.
Nice try Katrien, too thick again though.
There is nothing inherently controversial in the idea that we will sell some youth players. Its been done many times in the past for the overall good of the club - selling Lee and Minto helped get the club back to, and stabilised at, the Valley; Bowyer helped pay for the likes of Kinsella and Mendonca who helped get us promoted; Mills (a young player, not a Charlton graduate) helped keep the rest of that squad together after relegation laying the foundations for the period of on field success that followed; Jenkinson and Shelvey helped keep the club afloat and build the squad that got us back out of League 1.
The thing is, particularly in the cases of Bowyer and Jenkinson, the money was largely invested in the playing squad and other saleable youth players were retained to form part of the successful teams (Rufus, Newton, Solly for example). The controversy for the model, that KM's Dublin interview seemed to hint at, of raising these players purely to sell to the Premier League is it seems to omit any ambition for the improvement of Charlton's first team.
As far as using the fact we're willing to sell to the Premiership as a method for attracting youngsters, well we all know that if a player is really that good, and the Premier League club wants them enough then the move will happen and there is not a whole lot the Championship club can do except try and negotiate the best deal they can. In that respect we're not offering anything anyone else in the Championship (or soon to be League 1) doesn't, unless you are proposing the club acts more like the player's agent and starts actively pursuing their sale to the Premier League, even if they are maybe not quite ready/up to it. I hope you're not suggesting that as it would be mad.
If we want to get the edge when it comes to attracting young talent then we need to show that we have a) a good path to the first team for players who are good enough, b) a record of improving players before and after they hit the first team, c) have good quality facilities for them to train in, d) look after our players with other training and support outside of football (e.g. education etc.). At the moment I would say we do a pretty good job with our players until they hit the first team, but recently too many have been promoted too early to work with under qualified coaches who keep getting fired and replaced and in too many cases that has ended in the young player going backwards.
I'd have grave reservations about my kid joining Charlton, because they wouldn't be joining Charlton, they'd be joining the Duchatalet / Strapix network
To sign your child up to the academy at Charlton right now would be madness, and the quality of kids that the academy wants will be able to attract offers from academies that form part of better run clubs. That's the sad fact of the matter; we could have the best resources available but whilst the club overall is a shambles then the best kids will be wise to go elsewhere.
Not to mention, we're going to have major problems getting decent senior players in to the club now - just like we will have major scouting issues. Even with the best academy this suggests we are liable to fall further down the football league, and appearances at League One/Two level mean nothing to a Premier League side.
This is exactly one area where the Staprix idea falls apart, and one idea that Katrien seems happy to keep throwing out there. It's yet another way in which our ownership are demonstrated as incapable, incompetent and deluded.
If you have a kid who's as good as Lookman would you rather him playing for a league 1/2 first team or for the U21's at Derby for example. It's a hard question I guess. But every club nowadays is aware of every player no matter if they're in the first team or not.
Number one; The overarching ambition and purpose for the existence of this football club is to try to win matches as best it can.
Number two The club must try to afford to do number one, if that has to mean shrewd and honourable churn of players in order to survive financially then fair enough.
Number ten million The club must grow young players in order to sell them on to the Premier League.
Any takers ?
Ps just like to post out that after the recent Brentford away win none of the players, other than Sanago really wanted to come and celebrate with the fans - telling don't you think
Instead, we an eccentric absentee politician owner that believes himself to be a visionary up there with Alan Turing, a CEO who goes out of her way to bait fans and admits to journalists that she doesn't care about pre-Roland history, and a COO who wants to ban supporters from the ground (and possibly turn the ground in to a residential complex instead).
List of runners and riders:
Palace fans
Spanners
Club employees
Squirrel Face
RD (Burns of Belgium)
S.Parkes