I'm sure our announcement is due any minute in this - source was the meeting with the academy head bloke / Simon Ireland & David Burke at the SOB meeting I think.
Son of a bitch meeting
I just cannot see any auditor walking into the new training centre without acknowledging that it will be awarded cat 1, even if mistakes are made in the audit the centre offers an insight into the resources accessible to quickly correct something.
It seems unimaginable that it wont get the cat 1, although I havent heard whether they even applied for it this year, although I have heard thats the goal.
Exactly. It requires sustained investment over a period, with a certain number of full-time qualified coaches and contact hours at all age groups, and the FA guidelines suggest that around £3.5 m per year is the ballpark figure for a Category 1 academy. The building may look nice, but that's only part of the requirements. Watford recently took the decision to downgrade from Category 1 to Category 3 because they couldn't afford to sustain the investment levels.
If you were cynical (which, thank the good Lord, no-one has ever accused me of being) you might wonder how a club that can't find a bit of extra dosh to pay the wages of a proven left back such as Stephen Ward is aiming to fund a Category 1 academy ...
.ours is also cat one now
If you were cynical (which, thank the good Lord, no-one has ever accused me of being) you might wonder how a club that can't find a bit of extra dosh to pay the wages of a proven left back such as Stephen Ward is aiming to fund a Category 1 academy ...
That type of expenditure doesn't count against FFP though does it? So perhaps TB is more than happy to dig deep to fund infrastructure that should pay for itself long term, rather than pour more money directly into the pockets of players. It's not as if defenders are impossible to find, good as Ward was last season.
If you were cynical (which, thank the good Lord, no-one has ever accused me of being) you might wonder how a club that can't find a bit of extra dosh to pay the wages of a proven left back such as Stephen Ward is aiming to fund a Category 1 academy ...
Who?ours is also cat one now
Wages not the issue. I hear it's about the transfer fee.