Got something to say or just want fewer pesky ads? Join us... 😊

[Football] Stains sack Les Reed









Farehamseagull

Solly March Fan Club
Nov 22, 2007
13,959
Sarisbury Green, Southampton
About time. I've predicted this for a long time, their reputation has been vastly over rated for years. They actually stopped bringing through kids of any real quality a long time ago and their signings have been poor for a few seasons. I got shot down on here before last season when I predicted they would go down and they were mightily close. I still think there's a very strong chance they will go down this season, there are real problems with the running and direction of the club.

Mark Hughes was a great appointment for people like me who can't stand them as he was always going to be a disaster. Puel was the right man for the job, he did brilliantly with what he had available but the idiots who run the club listened too much to the clueless fans who didn't think the football was a of a high enough standard despite the limited ability they actually had on the pitch.

I'm loving every minute of it.
 


AZ Gull

@SeagullsAcademy Threads: @bhafcacademy
Oct 14, 2003
11,727
Chandler, AZ
Depends how you look at it. It's probably worth considering Chelsea's academy as a side business unrelated to the first team. It may have not been the original intention, but that's pretty much what it is now. Recent sales: Nathan Ake £20m, Ryan Bertrand £10m, Thorgan Hazard £5.6m, Patrick Bamford £5.5m, plus numerous other smaller sales. And don't forget the loan fees they get for the 30 or 40 players they have loaned out every season. That probably covers most of their academy wages. I'd imagine only the Man City academy rivals Chelsea's in terms of expenditure, but even so I doubt it's run at much of a loss, maybe it even turns a small profit.

Depressing that they never seem to have a manager who can see what they have right under their noses though. Probably the best place for a young footballer to be up until 18 or 19, but after that they should leave at the first opportunity.

Based upon the evidence available to us under Hughton's tenure so far, any young lad hoping to play for Albion's first team in the league should.......join the Chelsea academy!
 


Uter

Well-known member
Aug 5, 2008
1,474
The land of chocolate
Based upon the evidence available to us under Hughton's tenure so far, any young lad hoping to play for Albion's first team in the league should.......join the Chelsea academy!

I do wonder how much of managers overlooking academy prospects in favour of big money signings is down to psychological biases rather than objective analysis. I'm sure there must be an element of favouring a signing you made as a way of confirming your own good judgement. Some managers habitually set up academy players to fail, although I suspect they are unaware they are doing it. If opportunities are notoriously far and few between, rather than going out and seizing an opportunity, an academy player is going to be nervous or will be disinclined to take risks when their "chance" comes. Callum Husdon-Odoi got a few minutes a week or two ago and looked very unsure of himself and had little impact. Where are his next minutes going to come from?

If Loftus-Cheek had come through Everton's academy and Ross Barkley through Chelsea's, RLC would be the one Chelsea signed and played, whilst Barkley would be getting the odd minute here or there, or would be out on his 4 or 5th loan. The grass is always greener.
 




Cowfold Seagull

Fan of the 17 bus
Apr 22, 2009
21,622
Cowfold
Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ;8657695 said:
We've had Cook, Dunk, March, Elphick, Hall off the top of my head, but I get your point. Dull state of affairs for Chelsea fans, it can't be nice fielding a team that has absolutely zero home grown players in it.

As long as the team are doing well and winning trophies, l don't think the vast majority of fans could care less where the players come from.
 


Icy Gull

Back on the rollercoaster
Jul 5, 2003
72,015
I understand the individual words of your post, if not the sense of them. How does this apparent funding work? And how does it provide a pay-off to the nurturing club?

Big clubs like Chelsea and City bring through players in their academies. The cream of the crop are then loaned out to other clubs, a few of the players then make a name for themselves at lesser clubs (normally in the Championship but some in lower level Premier Clubs) and are then sold for millions, without getting a chance at City or Chelsea. Hence their academy has made a decent profit. I guess this more than covers the flops and gives them a few million to add to the massive coffers bolstering the crazy money they splash on foreign imports.

I imagine that we are doing the same whilst hoping a few make it the the first team here. Depending on where we are in the pecking order, the higher we get the more limited the chances of a youngster making the step up with us. We then sell them and fund the academy and make a profit on it.

I think academies are more a business than a player feeder to the clubs these days.

Hope it’s clear now, all make perfect sense to me :smile:
 
Last edited:


Super Steve Earle

Well-known member
Feb 23, 2009
8,355
North of Brighton
Based upon the evidence available to us under Hughton's tenure so far, any young lad hoping to play for Albion's first team in the league should.......join the Chelsea academy!

Since we don't have any players on loan from the Chelsea academy or anywhere else in the world, I doubt whether joining the Chelsea Academy would help a youngster play for Albion at all.
 






Not Andy Naylor

Well-known member
Dec 12, 2007
8,798
Seven Dials
Now that was funny. Wasn't it Souness in charge? Brought him on for about ten minutes, realised he couldn't actually play football at all and subbed him off. [emoji23]

I was at that game. He wasn’t that much worse than many of his teammates...
 


Pinkie Brown

I'll look after the skirt
Sep 5, 2007
3,542
Neues Zeitalter DDR
I was at that game. He wasn’t that much worse than many of his teammates...

The fallout afterwards was hilarious. Couldn't happen to a better club - aside from Palace & Pompey of course. Dia claimed he'd been at Paris St Germain, but in fact had played one game for a non league club in the North East - Gateshead I think? There was a great interview with the manager who'd sussed he was shite & let him go. He had no idea where he'd gone, until he was watching MOTD & Dia came on as sub for Southampton! It was a WTF moment for him.

Souness the weasel, tried to blame his assistant, Terry Cooper, for the farce. Souness claimed he wasn't conned and knew Dia was useless, but due to horrendous injuries, Cooper 'advised' him he had no option but to have Dia on the bench. Yeah, sure Graeme.

During the dark days of the late 90's, Dia would have probably got a start for The Albion. :down:
 




hans kraay fan club

The voice of reason.
Helpful Moderator
Mar 16, 2005
61,295
Chandlers Ford
Since we don't have any players on loan from the Chelsea academy or anywhere else in the world, I doubt whether joining the Chelsea Academy would help a youngster play for Albion at all.

Not right now we don't, but we have fielded Chelsea academy products Tomori and Brown fairly recently - which is what he presumably was referring to.
 


Surf's Up

Well-known member
Jul 17, 2011
10,167
Here
Big clubs like Chelsea and City bring through players in their academies. The cream of the crop are then loaned out to other clubs, a few of the players then make a name for themselves at lesser clubs (normally in the Championship but some in lower level Premier Clubs) and are then sold for millions, without getting a chance at City or Chelsea. Hence their academy has made a decent profit. I guess this more than covers the flops and gives them a few million to add to the massive coffers bolstering the crazy money they splash on foreign imports.

I imagine that we are doing the same whilst hoping a few make it the the first team here. Depending on where we are in the pecking order, the higher we get the more limited the chances of a youngster making the step up with us. We then sell them and fund the academy and make a profit on it.

I think academies are more a business than a player feeder to the clubs these days.

Hope it’s clear now, all make perfect sense to me :smile:

Chelsea's academy is just a battery farm fattening players ready for market - its a totally separate, rather cynical but very successful business.
 






Albion and Premier League latest from Sky Sports


Top
Link Here