Cost Of Bringing An Academy Player Through The System!!

[BoroCoxswain]

I've been meaning 2 ask this ? 4 a while now & I think Powlay if anyone will know or maybe will be able to find out the answer!! (if there is 1 lol) 2 satisfy my curiosity.

My ? is "How much does it cost to bring a player through the Academy lets say from the age of 9 years old, I guess it will vary from player 2 player!! but I would have thought that there must be an average figure!!!
I know the club won't want actual figures posted, but it would be nice 2 have some ballpark figure if possible.

It has always being in my thoughts since our academy was up & running

I Always wondered if we really get value for money as in the cost 2 bring them through Vs the price that we get when we sell them on (Joe Bennett, James Morrison, Adam Johnson & Stewart Downing 4 examples)

Hope someone can answer the ? I think others would also be interested.

[Powlay]

Its impossible to really put a figure on it.

Mainly because you would have to divide all the academy costs up (coaches, tea lady, admin staff) between each player in the academy per year to get a cost, and there isnt really a known amount of players in each age group pre 16 years.

It would be next to impossible to work out, the best i did was a while back working on £700k a season for academy running costs, vs income in sales.

When doing so it worked out that the academy brought in twice as much through sales to the club as it did costs to run. That was from about 10 player sales if i remember rightly.

[BoroCoxswain]

(30-09-2012 04:11 PM)Powlay Wrote:  Its impossible to really put a figure on it.

Mainly because you would have to divide all the academy costs up (coaches, tea lady, admin staff) between each player in the academy per year to get a cost, and there isnt really a known amount of players in each age group pre 16 years.

It would be next to impossible to work out, the best i did was a while back working on £700k a season for academy running costs, vs income in sales.

When doing so it worked out that the academy brought in twice as much through sales to the club as it did costs to run. That was from about 10 player sales if i remember rightly.

Cheers for your reply Powlay,

Yeah I know it must be difficult to calculate.

I think the club must have some ballpark figure & could maybe do a feature on the academy on here not just on Facebook, I honestly think this site is as just important as their Facebook site if not more.

How about the club setting up a ?/answer section on here to give us supporters worldwide a chance to air our views on a proper worldwide Boro only site!! I'd rather post my ? here than on Facebook, but then again maybe not.....coz I'm sure it would take a lot moderating & I guess it couldn't work (just me thinking aloud lo soz)

Cheers again Powlay ...much appreciated.

[Powlay]

The club could do all sorts they dont though.

As of this moment they have yet to put anything about the 13 new scholars who came in july 1st, no images nothing.
They have images for 2 players released in July still on the site.
They have no image of Ej Okosieme who signed for the club in Nov 2011
No image for Christian Burgess.
No mention of the new Ben Gibson 4 year contract.
No mention of last seasons new deals for Paul Weldon, or the extended scholarships for Waters, Rivers, Montgomery and Sirrell. No mention of Galpin and Roberts leaving.
This season they have a match report up for 1 out of 5 U18 games.
They have not bothered to even let fans know of a line up in the other 4 games, or scorers in the last 2.

As much as they love the academy when a Luke Williams or an Adam Reach plays and scores, or a Joe Bennett leaves and brings millions in they dont give a rats arse about fans knowing about the U18s and U21s.

The reason there is U21 reports is the club paid for Shaun to travel by rail to the Fulham and Chelsea games. Otherwise i dare say those games wouldnt have been covered.

Wolves at home they relied on him texting so they could update twitter whilst he stood there like i was soaked through to the bone.

To put it politley, the Adacemy and Development side are low priority. They would prefer it if you didnt talk about it.

I get all sorts for grief for posting what i do, to the point im being careful incase they look to ban me from attending.

Ive been told i 'attend games as a supporter but then operate as a journalist.' and 'request that you let us know in advance if you plan to publish any form of report on any of our games?'

Been told my match reports from a U17 game may jepordise the clubs EPPP standing, and it caused the club 'embarrassment'

Basically, they dont want me to give out info because it makes them look bad.

If you want to know who is a first year scholar at MFC you cant find out off the official site. The only place you can find it out is in the oneboro youth and reserve section of the forums.

How sads that?

[McTom123]

(30-09-2012 08:22 PM)Powlay Wrote:  The club could do all sorts they dont though.

As of this moment they have yet to put anything about the 13 new scholars who came in july 1st, no images nothing.
They have images for 2 players released in July still on the site.
They have no image of Ej Okosieme who signed for the club in Nov 2011
No image for Christian Burgess.
No mention of the new Ben Gibson 4 year contract.
No mention of last seasons new deals for Paul Weldon, or the extended scholarships for Waters, Rivers, Montgomery and Sirrell. No mention of Galpin and Roberts leaving.
This season they have a match report up for 1 out of 5 U18 games.
They have not bothered to even let fans know of a line up in the other 4 games, or scorers in the last 2.

As much as they love the academy when a Luke Williams or an Adam Reach plays and scores, or a Joe Bennett leaves and brings millions in they dont give a rats arse about fans knowing about the U18s and U21s.

The reason there is U21 reports is the club paid for Shaun to travel by rail to the Fulham and Chelsea games. Otherwise i dare say those games wouldnt have been covered.

Wolves at home they relied on him texting so they could update twitter whilst he stood there like i was soaked through to the bone.

To put it politley, the Adacemy and Development side are low priority. They would prefer it if you didnt talk about it.

I get all sorts for grief for posting what i do, to the point im being careful incase they look to ban me from attending.

Ive been told i 'attend games as a supporter but then operate as a journalist.' and 'request that you let us know in advance if you plan to publish any form of report on any of our games?'

Been told my match reports from a U17 game may jepordise the clubs EPPP standing, and it caused the club 'embarrassment'

Basically, they dont want me to give out info because it makes them look bad.

If you want to know who is a first year scholar at MFC you cant find out off the official site. The only place you can find it out is in the oneboro youth and reserve section of the forums.

How sads that?

That's ridiculous, surely this would be something the club would want to shout about from the highest roof top. Many people talk about how great our academy is, many non-Boro fans as well. It's a shame, to say the least, the academy and yourself get treated in this manner.

[Armster]

what the club are poor at marketing and fan involvement....? well i never!

Did you ever get any response about doing the reports officially Chris?

As you say the cost of each player with any degree of accuracy is near imposible to work out for people outside the system. Plus as I think you've mentioned previously its the invisable cost that it gives us also, with equal or possibly greater (and just as unquantifiable) value is not just the player sales potentially, its having that cushion of talent to rely upon where the club without this system would have to purchase players or freebies on bigger contracts.

[Powlay]

(30-09-2012 08:57 PM)Armster Wrote:  Did you ever get any response about doing the reports officially Chris?

I emailed them in May offering to do the reports for no costs because i attend anyway, got a reply 8 days after i sent the email saying they would look into it. I left it till late june before asking again then got a similar reply 5 days after.

Finally send them another email in august to which they didnt bother replying.

Never got a yes or a no, just fobbed off in typical MFC fashion.

When they asked me to let them know of any match reports i was going to do i emailed them telling them i planned on doing the Fulham U18 one, they couldnt reply to that either. So im not bothering with emailing them anymore.

I cannot express how dissapointed i was not to get an email reply especially when they try and bully me into telling them when i want to do a match report for Oneboro or my facebook page. Its been the same person ive been emailing clearly he has an issue with me.

Ah well tough titties huh!

[Armster]

Sorry to hear that Chris, I was semi obtamistic last season where a couple of games running they started showing match highlights on boro+ I thought that justified my subscription to it. Then they stopped that. There was a few fairly recently also, then it stops again.

You may pickup on a bit of a bitter vibe from me recently, but I'll support boro through thick and thin, its when I see blatent bad management that really gets my goat. Whether thans questonable tactics occasioanlly which is minor and usually a one off, or poor marketing, bad customer engagement etc.... Thats the field where I come from and it just frustrates me

[p_mards]

To say the club think the Academy and Development side are low priority is incredibly unfair. They put huge effort into the academy behind the scenes and just because they dont update their website with match reports and other information that 99% of fans wont really care about doesn't mean that it is low priority to the club. If it was such a low priotity why would Gibson have a meal with an acadaemy player and their family when they have made their first team debut.

Have you ever thought that the club(Dave Parnaby and Co) would rather the fans dont get as much information(match reports) as they would like so that the young players can focus on their own development as they are still progressing as a player and dont want them to be judged so dont want them to have the added pressure of match reports which has a huge effect on fans opinions of them.

I am not criticising you for writting the reports by the way as I enjoy reading them to try and keep upto date with the young players but I think you shouldn't take it as personally as you are and realise that the club dont want us fans to know too much about them for the reasons above.

[Powlay]

I have not said that the Academy its selt is low priority, i said that getting any news out from them is.

Whilst i agree that Dave Parnaby probably wants as little information out as possible it doesnt change the fact that they DO put match reports on there, just with no consistency. They have player images on there, just not the new ones and they are so slow that its unreal. Leaving players on there who are now at gateshead!

The images and what not dont matter much in the sense of 'fans knowing and adding pressure' does it?