It’s not viable as a League One side in terms of the cost to keep it going as is (a PL academy), but as a business, long term, it’s the only and most certain business model for the club that’s proven viable as it provides the club with a revenue stream that far outstrips the costs of running it or and provides the club with players for the senior squad, reserves and development squad. Without an academy and various programmes running, they could actually be expelled from the football league or face sanctions which as a member of the FA and the EFL they must adhere to operating a senior team, a reserve team, a development team etc.
Sadly I can see them scrapping programmes for the under 15s down and running the academy on part-time basis. I mean most of their staff are volunteers, part-timers or are on work placement schemes or affiliated to college programmes anyway.
They could sell the freehold/lease/land however it’s set up (I’m not sure) and rent it all back, but it’s not worth significant money and would make less business sense to property developers than to the club running it as a PL standard academy as a League One club.
To sell it off though for what would be pennies in relative terms would remove a business model that in terms of costs, saves the club money, generates money for the club and is the one true asset that belongs to the club not just short-term, bit forever how long they exist and on top of that it plays a vital role in many other areas in terms of the community, grassroots game, developing local talent and acting as the foundations in which the club stands on.
Remove that and it’s a long way back from there and no amount of money from TV, sponsors, rich owners or whatever will sustain the club in the way the academy can, does and will and as long as they have it, will do so forever.
That’s why it angers me more just how run down, neglected and forsaken our own academy set up under Ashley become far more than any relegation, star player sold or Rafa leaving or losing or whatever else because the academy is the lifeblood of the club in terms of the team in the way fans are in terms of the club.
I’d rather invest 20m in the academy than in any player or manager.
For all the stick Chelsea get over letting the likes of Salah go or de Bruyne, their academy earns them more money than ticket sales as they can get 2m a year just buy loaning a player out as a fee and have that club go halfers on that player’s salary or even take over that payout.
And should one of their academy players turn out to be the next Lampard or a Terry or decent enough but not too good enough for them they can sell to say Newcastle for 20m, well, that’s the equivalent of cash is king or as precious as gold.
If their owners had any sense, they wouldn’t go anywhere near the academy, if new owners had any sense, they’d buy SAFC for the academy alone which since it opened, has generated over 100m in revenue and enabled SAFC to operate a reserve side, a development side and a senior side, and always will providing it exists.
Barcelona and a German and Dutch clubs know the value of academies, youth programmes and look at England, our national team, the benefits we are now seeing from having enforced all clubs have an academy set up and development programmes and links with their community and the grassroots game.
If I had 40m SAFC would be the bargain of all time. I’d snap their hands off to own them. NUFC at 350m is a bargain because the value isn’t in how much money TV companies pay, how many tickets you can sell or how much you get for a player but what our clubs really are worth, solid fixed year on year, forever, global assets, like gold, like oil, like land and property.
Imagine owning NUFC and treating it as some kind of high street tatty shop, what a waste, what a complete and utter failure and clear stupidity not valuing what you have.
That’s Ashley.
Thankfully it seems our new owners value NUFC as something worth buying, owning, having, more than money and that’s why I’m far happier having them own us than Ashley who values the sum total of NUFC as fuck all and only values money which is actually worth fuck all in terms of any real value unless it buys you an actual asset. 350m or NUFC?
40m Joelinton or 40m on the academy?
Bruce 2m a yea or Rafa 6m a year?
Wise or KK?
The list goes on.
Andy Carroll, 35m, that would cover the cost of operating our own academy under Ashley for another 125 years. 1 Andy Carroll every decade or one Andy Carroll every year, if not in terms of resale value, but potential, benefit to the first team, potential to loan out for a million or two every season.
Nah, here’s a cheque for some wheelie bins, a few bags of ice and a blow up paddling pool.
Don’t fill them all the way up with water, that stuff costs money.
I get what you are saying, but when they are in such a shit state with no real return then what's the point in keeping it going? Ours is fuck all compared to theirs yet we've knocked out Carroll, 2 x Longstaffs, Dummett, Woodman plus others depending how far you want to go back. In the end of the day if they are talented enough then it doesn't matter, they'll make it. Problem is, everything else is so fucked the ones with talent depart for peanuts. Its not a working model.
If they don't start investing in the team in the very near future then they will become League 1 for a long time and tbh, easily could be worse than that. A couple of academy players in 3-4 years time isn't going to stop this rot and going off what's happened so far if a Pickford came through the ranks right now he'd be snapped up by one of the big clubs before he even gets a game.
I'm not saying closed it down for good but mothball it and run the bare min until the club is in a position to be able to support it properly. From what it sounds like now its not fully functional therefore just a black hole in terms of money and nothing back in return.
What the club needs to do for me is to be in contact with the top English clubs and snap up players being released every year. Benefit from other academies who have put the time in and developed a late teen early twenties player who is good, but not going to cut it there. So many of those types of payers go off to make great careers for themselves. If they bring in those type of players they'll soon get a rep for it and more will be willing to come and hopefully push the club on or move on themselves, at a good fee. Reinvest and keep doing that as a model. When the team is full of young decent players and turning over a profit, then they can bring the academy back up and spend the right amount of money and time on it. Right now shields are down the hull is breached and they need to deflect all power to their rear before being bum fucked in to oblivion.
