Posted by Claret + Blue Hero "Once upon a time, we used to get the best kids and the reason for that was because we were in what was the equivalent to the Premiership, we were in Europe, we were League Champions and everyone wanted to play for Burnley."Now, they want to play for Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and so on."The second thing is, we need to have Academy status, which is self funding. A minimal charge for an Academy, in other words, do Gawthorpe up, would be somewhere in the region of £3 to £4 "We, at this moment in time, cannot afford one." Finance is important. Our rivals, Blackburn Rovers, would take a kid and guarantee him his apprenticeship and a four-year contract at wages that some of my first team players aren't on. That is a problem we have and we just cannot attract the best kids. "At the standard we are playing, which is top half of the First Division with ambitions of playing in the Premier League, we need players to be good enough at that level. "If we dismantled the system, we could spend money scouting the Academies, because everyone can't play in the first team at Manchester United and that is an avenue that I would prefer because it would be more beneficial to us. "My view of this is to have one team, with 20 players and trawl the Academies and pick them up at 18 or 19 because the failure rate is too high at Burnley Football Club and you can set them back miles."We aren't producing any kids because we don't get the best players and it is something I have spoke about with the Board of Directors and the Chairman." On the topic of Gawthorpe and the possible redevelopment and funding of it, Director Clive Holt revealed: "The money involved is about £800,000 and overall around £1 million, but there are ways of mortgaging it and all donations to the Gawthorpe Trust Fund are welcome." There were many other topics brought up in the meeting, with suggestions made to the Board such as developing new changing rooms in the Jimmy McIlroy Stand, developing a link-up with a big club either at home or abroad whereby young players would be loaned to Turf Moor, which was labelled as 'self defeating' by Stan Ternent and also a query about the way in which players are contracted at the club. --- The lack of any good players coming through the youth set-up in recent years is very worrying. I wouldn't imagine that any of our current squad (with the exception of Blake, Papa, Glen and Arfur) would leave Turf Moor and go on to better themselves. The last player to come through the yts was Weller who's now 27. The lads of recent years who haven't made it Colin Carr Lawton, Phil Eastwood etc - haven't even built careers in the lower professional divisions. It really makes you wonder how good our current lot are? Shandran probably won't ever be given the chance, as Payton is still ahead of him, even though he doesn't even make the bench anymore. Earl Davis is meant to be good, although even when Coxy is defending shambolically against the likes of Rotherham still doesn't get alook in - not even an injury crisis is enough to make Stan consider bringing him back from loan. It really says something when Stan prefers to play his old pro's out of position, in favour of giving one of the younger lads a chance. What message does that send out to them? What hope do they have? I can't see us having a spare 12M to invest in setting up a proper academy, unless either we get promoted to the Prem or alternative source of major investment is found? Neither of which is looking likely at the moment! C'mon Alf, get your hands out of your pockets and cough up! Trawling the rejected talent from the prem teams, couldn't do any worse than our current youth set up is, and would probably be much cheaper. I agree with Stan, being a feeder club would be very self defeating. Anyone else have any view on the subject. Oh and as the club don't seem to be bothered about moving the away fans out of the Cricket field then having the changin rooms in the Jimmy mac would be the next best alternative. I'd bet the players would rather be in a stand with home fans, than under the current set-up
on 2/1/2003, 1:40 pm
One question from the floor regarded the future of youth development at Turf Moor, which prompted an interesting response from manger Stan Ternent regarding the young players at the club."This is a thing that is close to my heart, but the problem with Burnley Football Club is that we cannot attract the best kids," he said.
Hmm I doubt any of the older fans would ever have imagined a time where the idea of scrapping Burnley's youth set up, was ever being considered? The club's success in the 60's + was its ability to bring the best young players through its youth development - this allowed us to punch well above our weight for along time against the bigger teams in the top of the first division
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