Professional Development Leagues thread

Notts County have agreed to sell 15-year-old whizkid Jack Bearne to #LFC for about £150,000

— Billy Liddell (@Liddellpool) December 16, 2016

Pot and kettle.

 

The rules are designed so the Cat A clubs can take the best players from smaller clubs but Cat A clubs are not meant to compete with each other for players. You can disagree with those rules if you want, many do, but there's nothing pot and kettle about Liverpool taking a player from Notts County (frankly encouraged by the rules) and Man City taking a player from Liverpool (not within the rules).

I asked the question before in this thread of how many Cat A players Liverpool had poached from other Cat A clubs in contradiction of these rules and no names were forthcoming. One of the newspaper reports on this issue stated that the FA have been keeping a league table of which teams are breaking these rules and that Man City are running away at the top.

 

There were replies naming several; Longstaff was from Newcastle, Brewster from Chelsea, Dixon-Bonner from Arsenal, Parker from Arsenal, Sinclair from WBA at around the same time EPPP came in, those are all Cat 1.

The EPPP rules might not have been explicitly designed for this practice but there's nowhere prohibiting it, rather an unforeseen circumstance that has naturally been exploited increasingly because the arms race at the top of the academy tree is so intense now. The PL aren't keeping a track of teams 'breaking rules', they've been logging details of such transfers and implemented a five-stage process for the transfers to go through (which Liverpool claim City broke with Moulden, hence the story); if it was against the rules they wouldn't have gone to those lengths to formalise them.

I don't actually have a problem with it apart from the fact it unnecessarily and prematurely heightens expectation and pressure on 14-16 year-olds who already have enough to deal with, but that's a media issue rather than a club one (unless you're City and you're writing about your Under-15s on the official website); it's an inevitability to a certain extent and it still plays towards the EPPP's ethos of the best gravitating to the best, wherever they come from.

The pot/kettle/black thing was that I don't really think clubs can be complaining about losing players when they're so brazen about plucking players from elsewhere under the pretense that it's in their best interests. Let the kids decide what's in their best interests, and if that means moving from Cat 1 to Cat 1, so be it. It's like when Barcelona whinge about losing their players to English clubs because they come in and blow them away with an offer very akin to Barcelona blowing away Spanish kids training elsewhere to come and join the best academy in the world etc. Should just shut up moaning and get on with it.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...-Youth-Cup-fifth-round-clash-Aston-Villa.html

Broxbourne Borough from Level 9 of the Football league system face Aston Villa in the last 16 of the FA Youth Cup

Over 1,000 in attendance - some story.

Guess they have had luck of the draw to get this far, and their will be scouts like piranhas around their squad now.

 

Anyone know if there is a maximum first year intake number?

 

Yeah it's 15. Any group with more listed than that will have players on extended schoolboy forms.

 

So legally how does that differ to scholarships? They don't get a wage? As I reckon our intake next year could be upto 16/17

 

Yes that's right they don't get paid.

 

Although I don't think you can have more than 15 players regardless of how they're registered

 

You can only register 15 'Academy Players' per age group; without checking I'd wager that the extended schoolboy players don't count towards that definition by virtue of being on a different contract type, then when some of the scholars sign pro (and don't count towards the registration numbers?) they can then come in as scholars.

 

Because similar rules exists at younger age groups (where players are only on schoolboy forms) I don't see why schoolboys suddenly wouldn't count at the age of 16. Pro's are a different story and I agree that they don't count.

The only workaround I can see is offer 6 week trials to September born players that last from the first week of July to their birthdays in early-mid September then give them a pro at 17.

 

Chelsea beat Birmingham 5-0 in what amounted to little more than a training exercise. In fact Chelsea will have had tougher in-house matches.

Mason Mount did score a hat-trick though, with this the pick of three very good goals.

🏆 How about this from Mason Mount! Our Under-18s cruised to victory in the FA Youth Cup last night.

See more 👉 https://t.co/Vwpt6aZJTP pic.twitter.com/yS31EieTYO

— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) January 19, 2017

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...-City-spend-175-000-13-year-old-defender.html

More mentions of Man City U15s results.....

But £175k for a 13 year old from Southend, and no doubt a relocation of the family too. Just silly money.

 

With all the talk about how poor the U23 league is for players development due to lack of competitiveness and game time i just wondered if people thought it would work if it mirrored the senior set up. Could a system where the U23 (and possibly U18 teams) play the same teams as the ones in the senior teams league, e.g. Spurs U23's playing Burnley U23's or MK Dons U23's playing Walsall's U23's. This would guarantee at least 38 games for prem U23 sides and 46 for ones in the Championship, League One and League 2. I know this goes against the idea of EPPP where the clubs that have the cash to pay for x amount of coaches and pay £x millions towards facilities play each other but surely development of players is the priority.

I also thought, and i know this would never happen in a million years, that this format could have a promotion/ relegation aspect the same as the senior leagues has. An example may be that while a club may finish mid table in the prem their U23s may struggle and come 20th in the U23 league, the following season they would play in the league below against U23 sides from championship sides. This may introduce an aspect of competitiveness in that the teams will be playing for some form of pride as they could suffer the failure of relegation from their league. It may also allow teams who play in lower leagues but have decent youth setups (e.g. mk dons, birmingham city) to play against other successful setups (e.g. Chelsea, Man City) who under EPPP they wouldn't usually come up against.

Its just a crack pot idea but thought i would just throw it out there and let people debate it, tear it apart, etc

 

They already have introduced promotion and relegation.

 

Liverpool have been banned from signing Academy players for two years and fined £100k.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ol-banned-signing-academy-players-fined-stoke