Quote Originally Posted by ToTaL ITK View Post
not having a go...so you believe that the academy is a waste of time and money?
It shouldn't be, but Cardiff's has become that way for the second half of its existence. The purpose of any Academy surely is twofold - either produce first team footballers for your club or make it money through the sale of the better players who come through it. City's Academy has been failing on both counts for too long.

In my opinion, an approach at first team manager level that sees it as too much of a risk to pick youngsters for the senior side is partly to blame, but questions also have to be asked about the role senior coaching and management staff at the Academy given it's miserable recent record.

Fulham have a good Academy, but are, essentially, a throw money at it club these days who will be in trouble if their current owners ever decide to leave, whereas Brentford are prospering by prioritising scouting, recruitment and analytical work with the result that they have been able to keep on improving as a team and a club because they are consistently able to sell their best players at a large profit and replace them with "gems" recruited for relatively small amounts because most of the time they have the jump on bigger clubs because of their recruitment work which should be a blueprint for others, but, for some reason, tends to be ignored.

If there's any justice, Brentford will beat Fulham next Tuesday.