https://www.hartlepoolunited.co.uk/news ... ol-united/

I realise this is terrible news for the young lads currently involved, but Pools are £250k worse off next season and it's hard to see the point of investing in 9-16 year olds when the best prospects can walk away without giving anything back to the football club.

Well done Fulham. Well done Luca Murphy's advisers.

Its the right move but got to hope there are not many job losses.

Been one of the parents who's son has been told today it hasnt been good but expected ... regarding luca Murphy there was alot more too that then has been reported ... but have to agree for the future of the club its needed to re structure the who academy

A who academy would be fantastic. Producing future rockstars.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm sure there's another side to the story - there always is. But Fulham seem only to happy to avoid paying Pools anything for developing their new player because of a loophole in the regulations. I assume the agent got paid so no doubt he'll be happy too!

Sorry about how it's affecting your lad like.

Forge links with local /Regional teams.

Me mate who plays in the local leagues said he could put a team of 11 hpool lads together who would beat Pools.
No mean feat nowadays like.

It's very worrying as Singh got rid of Darlingtons academy and he said he wouldn't make the same mistake with Pools!
Well he has got rid of ours alarm bells ringing! If we don't get promoted next season he will pull the plug and bye bye Hartlepool!

We’re doomed!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Short sighted getting rid of academy. Why not fund it next season if we are getting back to the football league? It will take 10 years to 're establish it now! Lost out on compensation for lots of players!

Lincoln kept their academy look at them now with a steady supply of young plsyers or some nice compensation when they sell them

As things stand Football League clubs get compensation if another club poaches an academy player, National League clubs don't.

Till that loophole is closed (and the way football authorities move that might take longer than Brexit) the Chairman is entitled to think he would be better off spending his money on other priorities.

And where do you get the idea it would take 10 years to re-establish an Academy? Did it take 10 years to establish the first one one?

We didn’t get any compensation for Luca Murphy. That’s the point


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Whatever

I'm with stocktonpoolie on this one. Look, I get the financial argument now etc but shutting the academy is short sighted. Have pools used it well? Absolutely not, but a well run academy with a clear pathway to first team football for those who succeed is a potential money maker. Problem is if we take everyone's cast off's aged 16-18, well there is a reason they are cast off. Every professional club in this land knows everything about players 16 and over in any academy thanks to scouting systems and software etc. So if anyone good does come up, sure as hell they won't end up here.

The Murphy thing has polarised opinion and it's right both we and the club are frustrated with it. However, if this kid was good enough and was given a chance in the first team, the chances of him signing a contract were much higher. Look at Hawkes, how long has it taken him to break in. Youth players will make mistakes but we as fans do give them more time if one of the clubs own. I personally think we should be saying lets have a minimum of 2 or 3 youth players int eh starting 11 as a metric to measure the manager by. Why? Mainly because they'll know how to play the way the manager wants creating a culture, and they'll care more. More importantly if given the promise of 1st team football and a good place to learn then more likely to sign deals.

So, now we've shut the academy, what are we going to get? Free transfers on 1 or 2 year contracts who really aren't interested in the club, just want a wage. Also we'll be fighting over what's left. What's left might be a panic buy and not be suited to our style of play or be completely wrong for the club and then they just leave on a free at the end of their contract. That cycle will repeat itself for about 10 years. So I agree, we would be somewhat doomed and consigned to National League for the long future.

You can’t just put three youth team players in the first team if you haven’t got three ready for first team. Yes it’s a nice idea in principle but in the real World? 17 year olds playing tough competitive football? I don’t want to sound too Alan Hansen but kids will not get us out of the predicament we find ourselves in.

Take the lad Murphy as an example, having some ability and potential is little bit different to being ready to play Centre Back in the National League in amongst the flying elbows with no protection from crap referees. He obviously wasn’t seen as ready for first team Football as he hadn’t been involved.

Quite a few clubs in the League are going down this route anyway, is the academy system at Pools level a proven success?

I don’t see it as short sighted, it’s called taking stock and cutting your cloth accordingly. If we do it properly it can work. A kid leaving a bigger club at 15 or 16 can still go a long way in the game we can still offer a pathway to pro Football for these kids. We have picked up plenty of kids in this way before (Luke James being one I think) you can even build the youth team in a way and playing in the way you want to first team to in terms of systems and the type of players you sign. You can still have a centre of excellence and have kids representing the club at younger age levels. The manager is big advocate of young players and youth football so I am sure the decision has been made for the right reasons and with the best interests of the club at heart going forward.

PJ, i agree with you, kids won't get us out of the predicament we are now in. But sadly, neither will mercenaries. And of course we'd get the odd battering but i think we have to accept that without serious investment we're here for a while so let's make the most of what we can out of the youth team, try and generate a revenue stream from that. As fans, that's tough to swallow i know but i'd rather see us building to a future rather than just recycling the same thing every 1-2 years and being stuck in a rut. I agree though it's lovely theory but in practice we have to have the players coming from the youth team who are good enough. And that's where i think we haven't used the system to it's potential.

Also i agree that Hignett seems to me to be the right guy to have in place, i only hope he's given time to get us playing in a certain way and the right players for that system can be brought in or developed from the youth.

It's a nice theory but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single club that hasn't brought in a team of 'mercenaries' (players from other clubs) to get out of this league.

Orient were in dire straits the year they got relegated and the nadir for Pools was getting beat by what was basically their youth team. Had a look at the team they went up with on Saturday and 10 of the 11 starters are experienced pros who have been signed from other clubs over the past 2 seasons. Only one youth team graduate - Jake Koroma - made the side.

Hignett is on the right track.

Alternatively humps we can build relationships with the north east big 3. If they let a kid go at 16 who might not be for that level we can take a look at him and he might be for us. Eg bale


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I read a good article a while back (I think on the BBC website) about Brentford who got rid of their academy and reserve squad. They take on young players released from other clubs( agreeably around London is a bigger catchment area with more pro clubs) and only play regular friendlies against good European U23 etc teams. They have been succesful and have a good record of players promoted to the first team. They maybe lucky or good at what they do. It has saved the club money too. It may be a 1 off situation but maybe worth a closer look at their model.

4 scholarship offered for next season and 1 on the move from the current crop of under 16s. Will be some compensation apparently so proves academy pays!

Other players have left since just doesn't get publicised! So when we have a gem of a player who moves for decent money and then has add ons when he's sold for big bucks which would happen and we get millions oh no this will never happen now as no academy and when we get back to the football laegue next year it will take 10 years to re establish the academy this is why we should keep it

If other players have left and they don’t get publicised then name examples of this ever happening and give us examples of some of the figures received?

Surely these fees received would have featured in the clubs accounts at some point in the past?

Saying it might happen is akin to the Chairman spending £250,000 a season on lottery tickets, he might win. Plus that investment has zero protection as long as we are at this level. So unless we are promoted he can’t collect his winnings.

We still have a youth set up we still have pathway for young players into first team football we are just cutting our cloth accordingly and following what most clubs in our position have to do. If it’s done well picking up 16 year olds who have been through bigger academies could really work for us.

At end of the day it’s not the people who have had to take this step who are to blame it’s the charlatans before that put us here.

Dident know we were owned by a band from Manchester.

They’d have done a better job than the pair of chancers we got, in fact a tramp from Manchester would have been better than Coxberg, and would have put exactly the same amount of money into the club.

There's one huge problem with the Brentford model. It costs more to run than our academy did, and infact probably more than our entire club. The upfront costs of the scouting software they use, then there's the ongoing statistical analysis of players as well as the wages etc. For a club of their size that model absolutely works and because they have the right coaches and philosophy of playing styles they can really maximise their system.

Problem is, we don't have the same software/coaching investment and can't afford the upfront costs. We're not using player stats at that level. And ultimately we have no philosophy or style of playing so not entirely sure what players we are looking for to make it work. So we're essentially still taking a scatter gun approach in the hope it works.

I completely get the points above about previous players not giving us value etc. Yep, we as a club have failed massively in that department, whether it be not producing good enough players or being so far down the ladder that the value of players is somewhat lower. But if i think back to when and where we almost got it right - Boyd £500k to Luton. James Brown i remember being rumored to Celtic. Sweeney, again remember a championship club rumoured to be in for him. Luke James. Baldwin. Then there's the players our previous owners really didn't get the value of Nsiala, Laurant etc...

With the right structure and incentives it could work. I'll emphasis the could as yes i know it's a massive risk, and ok maybe one we can't afford now. But still, not having it limits that risk and my problem with the club is routed in the points above. We're not buying the right players to fit because we don't know what they are meant to be fitting into. It's not a case of square peg round hole it's square peg undefined hole. Now we do have some scouting software and scouts, but what are they looking for exactly. Until the manager is given time to find out what works and what we want, i'm not confident we'll bring in the right players for the first team even. CHrist we couldn't even bring in the right manager as everyone went nuts over how good an appointment Money was, not seeing what exactly he stood for and how radically different it was to anything we'd done before.

I’m afraid we can’t run an academy to the cost of thousands every year because sweeney and brown were rumoured to go to bigger clubs.

You can’t sustain it on rumours.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not saying run it on rumours, i was using that as examples of the players that had come from the system in the past. At the time, either injury or our league position meant that they were exactly that, rumours, and they weren't sold. We have to look at it differently now and reach the level of development we have previously for some players but look at ourselves as a selling club rather than pushing for any promotion or decent league status.

What i am saying though is that, if we go to the Brentford model, well there's no point as we won't do it even 10% as well. We either invest in the academy and do it properly and well or not at all and hope that we find some sort of player who does well that we can sell. Another Nathan Thomas i guess but with better sell on clauses etc. problem is you have to invest somewhere, be it the academy or better scouting, otherwise we've got no idea what's coming in or why

If Raj and Hignett think scrapping the academy is the way forward then thats fine by me. Hignett knows if he fails here that will be it for his management career, I doubt he is going to agree to anything that he thinks will be detrimental to it.

You mention a fair few but last time Hignett was in charge he did pretty well in his recruitment: Nsiala, Carroll, Amond, Laurent, Allesandra, Thomas (or was he Moore?) and imagine there were a few more who all went onto better things.

I imagine he knows what backing he has from Raj and is confident he can bring in what is needed.

Why does the new structure mean we are no longer going to be able to bring kids through it into the youth team then the first team and sell them on? We haven’t abandoned our youth set up.

Interesting article here on it;

https://medium.com/@GriffinAnalysis/why ... 0bdae15dbc

PJ, it is a good article you point out there, and it is a subject covered quite a bit. Also there's the book no hunger in paradise which focuses in on the Brentford model. I agree, it is a good model for championship/league 1 clubs and i don't have a problem with that. It just will not work for us. Just my opinion, but i feel this because:

- Every club mentioned in that article has a philosophy or a clear idea of what they are looking for and how they want to play. We don't. Are we attacking? Are we long ball? Are we trying to pass ti around? Look at our current squad, we have featherstone who fits the pass it around model yet everyone else around him fits a different model, our recruitment has been bonkers.
- Those clubs almost guarantee first team football to graduates, mainly because they are good enough as per the point above. For us how long did it takes for Hawkes to get regular first team action? For me the last player we really showed faith in was Luke James and i remember his debut well where he looked so different and positive to everything else we had.
- Those style of academies are powered by expensive statistical analysis. So no they're not farming in the old way but it's so focussed and they know everything about those players and their targets. It's the classic moneyball system. We don't have the finances to do anything like that. It requires quite an upfront investment. Nothing on the level of the academy sizes they run, but still it's a lot more than what we were paying anyway
- Coaching. They embrace the latest coaching techniques and have a large team of coaches. So fewer players, better and more coaches to get the best out of that select group. We as a club, clearly haven't bought into that looking at our coaching staff.
- As soon as that model yields success, it'll get scrapped as to sustain premier league football, you can't take the risks with kids anymore. Look at Middlesbrough, since they got promoted and trying to again, the pressure is so much to do it again that they have to spend money on each player in every position or rely on what they found two-three years ago (Fry). Nothing new has broken into that team this year. Tavernier doing well but can't break in, it's too risky as they chase the premier league dream. So the model isn't perfect or gives clubs what they need
- Finally, the attractiveness of going to a good set up is obviously key. We can't attract that, we don't have the set up, we don't have the pathway to the first team, we don't have the support of fans who'll accept the odd thrashing as part of a learning curve. So who wants to join and commit to that?

All of the stuff you mentioned though is applicable whether we kept the academy or not.

Surely with the youth set up condensed in this way it’s easier provide a better level of coaching and clearer plan for what we want going forward? Plus we do and can provide a pathway to first team football if we do things better. As things stand we don’t get the best younger kids in he area anyway because they go to the ‘big three’ now with the right contacts we can Hoover up some of the better prospects at 15 and 16 from these clubs. The focus has to be return to the Football League above anything else though, if it is short sighted then it has to be for now it wasn’t that long ago when it was hard to see a future for the club at all which also needs to be remembered.

Hignett needs time as manager for a start, you cannot keep changing the manager every five minutes then be surprised at our recruitment and playing style being all over the place.

Yeah on the whole agree, the underline is we need to do it better, whatever it is. And, if the focus is get back to the league ASAP then the youth system isn't part of that as it's a long term investment. But wholeheartedly agree that Hignett needs the whole season in charge at least, regardless of how results go, given where we have come from

Shame we don’t have Miles Jacobson as a fan like Watford who have on tap the best scouting network in the world.