Shrimpsvoices

Paul Fletcher's latest blog on the BBC Sport website is around the subject of Youth Development and the Premier League's plans to alter the system which could potentially damage a number of lower league clubs. You can read it by going to http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/02/football_league_fears_over_pla.html#283800. However, I just want to pick out one small snippet from it as I believe it says a lot about the direction our club has gone in recent years re: youth.

Currently only Morecambe and Hereford do not have youth development programmes and the Football League is worried that figure will increase under the new proposals.

I didn't realise we didn't have a youth development programme at all, I thought we still had it but Sammy just chose not to use it.

Thing brings me on to something I keep meaning to mention our transfer policy. I really feel that in the summer the directors need to sit down with the manager and work out a viable long term transfer policy even if the manager is still Sammy. If he gets offered a new contract it should be a term in his contract to re start youth development. If he doesn't agree then we should go our seperate ways.

The size of the club we are we can't afford to keep bringing in players every transfer window as short term fixes and paying more and more agents fees etc and we just seem to be going round in circles. The board back Sammy every transfer window then as soon as the loan window opens all you here him talk about on the radio is wanting more players!!! Our squad would be the size of an American football team if Sammy had his way.

I have recently read a few articles about the moneyball technique which the new owners at Liverpool are into and it seems to make perfectly good sense. Although to be fair it's nothing radical it's just what Crewe have been doing for years and what we used to do. It's about how to go about finding an undervalued player at a bargin and then sell them on when they become overvalued.

Maybe it makes you become more of a selling club which people don't like but clubs our size need to look at maximising revenue from trading players as it's all extra income that is much needed. Also if you have a succesful system you should have a conveyerbelt effect where your next bargin should just becoming good to take the place of the person you are selling.

Will be intresting to see what happens at Liverpool in the summer with Gerard. If Real Madrid put a big big money offer in and with Gerard now 30 the new owners might think he is overvalued and take it, I can't see it going down well with the fans though.

I can't imagine sammy being against setting up our own youth programme and I would have thought its in the directors plans now we have the new stadium. I knew we didn't have one because it is just the college scheme that we had some sort of affiliation with - that was my understanding anyway. I think some of the stick sammy gets for not bringing in local youth is unjustified as there hasn't actually been any we have missed out on. Aaron taylor was overated and has found his level much lower down the pyramid. The only notible local guy we have missed out on is jordan connerton who, so I have heard, hates morecambe (due to being brainwashed by bitter lancaster folk no doubt). At the same time he is willing to take gambles on young players like parrish and that paid off. If we controlled our own academy it would probably be more successful but its only now at the globe that we really have the facilities to do it.

In terms of raw youth development, we're at the bottom of the rung locally - most very young players will be snapped up by local, bigger teams - we can't compete, and any promising youngster will likely be snapped from us the way Arsenal do with foreign kids.

However, there is an argument that Morecambe should be positioning themselves to pick up kids who haven't made the grade at a higher level - the amount of players at our level who have started at bigger clubs and dropped down is staggering, and the club should be looking to get these players onboard and build on their development.

But we used to have a reputation for youth development. We have had a run of players who came up through the club but that can't now happen. Developing a good youth policy is imperative at this level I would think, even more so now that we have facilities to make use of.

I thought one of the things when we got promoted was that we might have a better chance of keeping hold of the youngsters as when we were non league it was easy for the league clubs to come in for them as we couldn't register them or something. Where as if a kid was a member of a league teams set up there were more regulations in place.

Southport put us to shame, whether its developing talent or finding it. We need their scout and keep him in the Liverpool area!!!

We do need to get something set up ASAP we seem to struggle getting players to come to Morecambe as it is. If we did change manager in the summer I would like to see whoever comes in to look at our youth set up because clearly it's not working to it's full potential just being run in partnership with LMC.

I've played with/against plenty of people who could be good enough to join an academy for a small club. With the new facilites we should definitely set up an academy.

It will be interesting to see if sammy re-signs any of the three young lads he gave one year deals too...................

The cost of setting up a working academy is phenomenol, the development costs, coaches, facilities, kit, digs, schooling etc added to that each 'scholar' is paid a wage. Where do people propose the club find the money for this maybe our staggering attendances could do it, oh wait.

Someone mentioned about players dropping down from higher level clubs, realistically if a scholar shows and signs of quality they will be kept on until they are 18 and therefore out of academy age group by the time their initial contract expires. Prem, champ clubs take on that many scholars now the ones that are released at 16 and picked up by League 2 clubs invariably don't make it the grade at pro level, by the time their scholar contracts have elapsed at a prem club they are 18 going on 19 at the youngest. You look at the team Blackburn playes against Morecambe and many of the team were 20/21 and must be signed on full time pro deals and at this level for the wages they would command they would need to be first team squad members immediately. The model in its current form isn't financially viable for us, it would cost going on a million pounds to set up and probably £500k annually. It simply wouldn't yield the results on the field to make it viable.

^^^^

Which is why we should save ourselves the trouble and steal southport's chief scout.....

Interesting point that only Hereford and ourselves don't operate a youth scheme.

I can accept its very expensive to run but it means that clubs like the perma-skint Accrington and Stockport for example somehow manage to do so.

We can't just keep relying on short-term journeymen to keep fire-fighting each season. Southport really do seem to have the knack of unearthing gems on a fairly regular basis and we dont need telling how our Academy did so well for us albeit in the Conference.

I guess a balanced recruitment policy is the safest way to move forward. Surely a must for discussion in the summer ?

Aldershot's is working well for the young ones, but the new rules are putting it all under pressure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/footbal ... 425650.stm

I thought we had a academy side