Project Brave

[rusty_nail]

The clubs have been announced and where they lie in the grand scheme.

Forth Valley is in the middle-tier:

The 'Progressive' category was designed to ensure 'smaller' but ambitious clubs with academies could find their natural place in
the system, with scope to push on.

[Dade]

If someone can explain what it means then it would be greatly appreciated but get the strong feeling, as with a lot of Scottish footballing ventures, that it's a load of bollocks.

[Dade]

Next part of project Brave looks set to go underway next season. I’m so much against this idea. Pandering to Rangers and Celtic as per usual allowing them to increase their hold on Scottish football and to hell with the rest of us.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/foo ... SD28SsCmSt

[Kiddy]

That's NOT project bravo. That's c**t teams, & precursor to these two teams vacating the SPFL, should that chance ever appear, leaving a presence to hoover the cash that would remain.
Why aren't all the other "elite" systems being asked?

[Dade]

That's NOT project bravo. That's c**t teams, & precursor to these two teams vacating the SPFL, should that chance ever appear, leaving a presence to hoover the cash that would remain.
Why aren't all the other "elite" systems being asked?

Yeh just as allowing them to play in the Challenge Cup was a precursor for this move.

[Kiddy]

Watch the Challenge Cup getting ditched, if this is allowed to happen.
They would have achieved their aim & be good to go at the earliest opportunity.

[Dade]

This is an interesting article from another perspective about the closure of the FV academy.

Says that the income outweighs the expenditure but without giving any figures.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alternat ... nney-jamie

[Sir Jones]

I like the "all numbers reported are wrong except mine" part.

No one will know the "real* finances behind this one. Too many agenda driven arguments to wade through to get to the truth.

[rusty_nail]

So many players that were on the pathway yet Stenhousemuir didn't want or have the means to continue it either

As SJ says, we will never know the truth of what value it actually gave us other than "X number of players were academy graduates". Cost to maintain versus fees over time is the greatest unknown.

[Dade]

So many players that were on the pathway yet Stenhousemuir didn't want or have the means to continue it either

As SJ says, we will never know the truth of what value it actually gave us other than "X number of players were academy graduates". Cost to maintain versus fees over time is the greatest unknown.

What player sales and amounts from academy players did we have?

Arfield £500k
Barr £200k
Stewart £250k
Flynn £50k
Murdoch £50k?
Jay Fulton £600k?
Kingsley £800k?
McGrandles £1m
Biabi £150k?
Ryan Blair £100k?
Alston £50k?
Gallacher £300k?
Sibbald?

The other thing I would then say is what worth did the first team get from these players? Arfield and Barr were great players for us. We had to put up with a lot of under par Kingsley performances before he came good. Fulton and McGrandles done a good job as did Alston and Sibbald.

The next big question then is for the players that done a defent job, could we have brought better in? Players who are already up to speed and ready to hit the ground running. Darryl Duffy, Alan Gow for example? Young players who can instantly cope with the rigors of first team football and who have potential resale value.

I guess you have to weigh all these things before deciding if the academy was worth it.

[rusty_nail]

...
I guess you have to weigh all these things before deciding if the academy was worth it.

To use a manufacturing analogy, we've stopped working with raw materials to produce a finished product and instead are buying in a prefabricated component and hoping to polish it

I suppose with hindsight the risk/reward of doing it the old way was that the club could invest a lot of time and energy producing players who could eventually leave for peanuts or as we have now a model where you gamble on signings who may or not be up to the task and as we are witnessing end up jeopardising our status and revenue.

I know which model I thought was worth it

Far from giving the club an annual cash boost these player sales were just filling a cash hole. A significant chunk of that annual hole was related to the costs of running a full youth development programme. The risk to the club was that if these costs were allowed to continue and we went a full 12 months without transfer or sell on income at or above £400k this would have placed the club at risk of running out of cash.

Surely the elephant in the room with this quote in the chairman's statement is the premise that the board wouldn't fund that shortfall. As I've read it, the financials are based around the break-even budget that the board wishes to pursue.

I get that the club has to be able to "wash it's own face" but it's clear that binning the academy was a choice not a necessity as it's being painted now.

[Dade]

...
I guess you have to weigh all these things before deciding if the academy was worth it.

I know which model I thought was worth it

Well let’s look at it this way, this last 2 times we won this division there was no academy(that I know of) and we still managed to emerge young talent such as Mark Kerr, Lee Miller, Andy Rodgers and Ryan McStay.

Bringing unknowns from England is not the only alternative to having an academy structure. Most clubs that have won promotion have done so with a good basis of tried and tested players, a couple of decent youngsters and the odd diamond in the rough or talented loanee. That’s the structure we used to use under the days of Totten and McCall and I’d much rather see that than flood the team full of youngsters who are not physically or mentally ready to cope with regular first team football.