11 Feb 2016 13:44:14
Is anyone else listening to woodwards conference call, Even with all our on field problems, it seems we are doing pretty well off field. Revenues going up, debt going down, though the most interesting thing for me was his comments regarding academy restructuring, wherein he said no replacement for mcclair was appointed so as for utd to do a review of academy from top to bottom, and that the review is complete and changes are underway.

1.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 13:49:38
I wonder if those changes include the mooted cuts to spending on the academy? It's easy to say plans are underway, but there is little or no evidence that the owners are actually going to invest the type of money needed to both modernise our facilities and hire enough top quality coaches. As it stands, we are far behind the best academies in the UK and Europe.

2.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 14:00:29
danny he asked the guy who asked the academy question to expect some more announcements in coming days, so i would wait a few days before slagging woodward or the owners off, i mean every utd fan complained about glazers under fergie, citing them as the reason why we were not spending money on players, yet since he left we have spent about 300 mn or so, u can't blame them for managers not spending well, i am not saying glazers haven't introduced the cuts you mention rather just that let's see what these changes woodward talks are, before condemning him or the glazers.

3.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 14:57:43
In my view we need to take the emotion out of the academy and look at it like the owners will (maybe) . Yes it will be great in the long run if we can produce our own world class talent, but frankly with so much competition why bother spending millions on a needle in a hay stack.

Any young player is going to need to be slowly eased into the first team which could mean we suffer short term. Where are last years young talents and the year before that's?

Much more sensible to make minimum spend in the academy (sticking to the rules) then to use that money to buy ready made talent. Leave the development to the rest and just syphon off the best EPL/ CL proven players. Ultimately the game has moved on, academies for top teams are a waste of time and money imo and worse damaging potential of young talent. How many young players have come through City, Liverpool, Utd, Chelsea etc. Most young players are snapped up at 18-21 when they have first team experience and will benefit the first team immediately.

Without knowing the precise finances involved, I only think investment is made for HG status now for the most part - it's too long term and managers/ philosophies change far too frequently for a true effect to be seen. When LVG goes will the new manager have the whole thing started again training the youngsters in a different way of playing? Who knows, but we have a bad habit of getting the big calls wrong at the minute, I worry about any 'major plan' with Woody behind it when it comes to football based activity.

I'd love to have a conveyor belt of talent coming through, but so do 50+ other clubs, why bother competing when we can just raid them once the talent has been proven?

4.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 16:02:55
It's not exactly baseless slagging off when the current owners have allowed one of the best academies in Europe to utterly stagnate. Not only do we hire less coaches per academy player than most other EPL clubs, we also pay our coaches less money. Tellingly, even though City invested huge amounts of money in new facilities, they still spend about three times more per year on their academy than we do.

The owners have been well aware of the problems with our academy for years, and have been more concerned with micromanaging academy expenditure than modernising. I find it really difficult to believe that in the wake of proposed cuts to the academy, we will now see anything but lip service to productive change and investment in the youth structures.

5.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 16:05:49
Beast, that is a horrendous view of our academy. Which is a massive part of our history. With no academy we would have no Charlton, Best, Whiteside, Beckham, Giggs, Scholes ect ect in our history books.

A massive part of our success as a club has come from our academy.

We have had two spells in history where we really dominated and won the majority of our trophies.
The first was with Sir Matt Busby with a team that heavily relied on youth players. They became the backbone of our first European cup winning team.
The second spell was with Sir Alex, with the class of 92 becoming a vital componant in our success, the Nevilles, Scholes, Butt, Beckham and Giggs being the big names but players such as Brown, O'Shea and Fletcher playing very important roles as well.

We made the mistake after Sir Matt left of foegetting where we came from and how we got there. We turned our back on our values and thought we could buy further success. And we failed massively, and never fully recovered until Sir Alex came in and reminded us what made us great.

I feel we could be about to make that mistake again. Our next great team will have academy players as part of it. History will repeat itself.

Our academy doesn't cost all that much to run in the grand scheme of things, in fact in the last 10 years the academy has been breaking even, sometimes even making a profit from selling young players who aren't going to make it at our club.

With further investment at the very least we should be able to have a steady steam of squad players which would save us spending money on the likes of Rojo, Young or Blind. We practically have that now with the likes of McNair, Lingard and CBJ. We spent over 50m on Young, Rojo and Blind and that's not even taking their wages into consideration. That money would run the academy in its current form for 3-4 years.

With further investment w would have those squad players easily covered giving us more money to spend on world class stars. Plus every now and then we might get a Giggs, Scholes or Best come through. If MK Dons can nurture talents like Dele Alli then we really have no excuse with the riches and facilities available to us.

The Academy has been the cornerstone of every great Manchester United side, to disregard it is to disregard what has made us great.

6.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 16:11:28
Come on beast u can not really think like that?

7.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 16:52:09
FFS Beast go and preach that to Barca, who still show the world how youth should be nurtured, or even us in he not too distant past. Remember even a squad quality home grown player probably costs £20m.

8.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 16:56:45
Shappy - That's old school mate, game is no longer for the fans or the kids, its for the money. Competition is so intense now that it's too much of a risk blooding kids properly, winning the next game will always take precedent over a structured development plan for a youngster. One bad result or performance and the kid will be rotting in the U21's again - Lingard will vanish next season mark my words.

Then we have Martial, Shaw etc that we pay a fortune for, but believe they are far superior to our own crop of youngsters.

CTR - I firmly believe that local football clubs should stick to their catchment areas, be part of the community and develop the kids surrounding the area only and be forced to have at least 5 young proper home grown players on the bench. Alas it's a horrible game now, money talks, kids will be ripped from all parts of the world and will rot for the most part.

Rafael and Fabio had they been acquired by a Southampton or Everton would be world beaters now imo. Powell, maybe even Januzaj, we can all speculate about attitudes and other scenarios but there are loads of them. We just ruin them, like all the other top clubs do, unless they get a long run in the first 11.

Too much money at stake and too much competition - youth academies are a thing of the past for elite clubs however much City are trying to buck the trend. In 10 years time I bet one or two max will be in the first team. They are just money making exercises to farm out players to lesser clubs for cash, X has played 10 games for Utd so his value goes up by a couple of million. We will keep buying the Martials of the world who will trump any of our own products, as will the rest of the elite clubs.

9.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 17:08:09
Barcelona. That doesn't prove your point. Go preach that to the 100 or so other clubs that are actively trying to develop top class youth players, but are stuck with the also rans.

Barcelona rape all of Spain and further afield, leaving scraps for the rest. Just imagine the amount of talent being wasted because Barcelona have stockpiled.

People are looking at this all wrong. It's not the 90's anymore, globalisation has happened folks and money talks. Youth will always play second fiddle to the immediate necessity to win now.

10.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 18:05:44
people won't like it but i think beast is right, the game has moved on .

only the very best kids are good enough for the first teams of the top clubs and there is only a few of them kids around .
as far as i see beast makes a good point on how football is now run, rather than some romantic idea we would all like to see.

11.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 18:31:15
The football economic bubble will burst like all economic bubbles do.

12.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 19:09:50
On scenario to further my point: Fabio was meant to be by far the better out of the twins, however because of Evra he never really got a kick. Rafael didn't do as well as we hoped, but he was by no means poor, had Neville retired earlier who knows! Just imagine how good Fabio could have been had his development been the priority. It simply can't be when young kids are competing with some of the worlds best players like Evra. However had we let Fabio and Rafael go to a club like Southampton, maybe we would have been buying those two a couple of years ago for £50m, but they would be twice the players.

Two twin having the same opportunity and the less talented one did much better out of the two - that is plain wrong and tells us all we need to know about clubs at the elite level sacrificing young talent for immediate success.

13.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 20:10:16
as someone who in the financial industry and a small united shareholder this is good news. With the way the market is going the past couple of months at least MANU is up.

14.) 11 Feb 2016
11 Feb 2016 23:04:41
The fact Fabio was always crocked hindered him. Over evras last few years at the club he declined an we were in dire need of someone who could step in and give evra a rest.

15.) 12 Feb 2016
12 Feb 2016 10:25:32
the damage had been done.