wardy12345 wrote:What are the different categories what’s the difference between them
Cat 4 only get funding for players the age of 16-18 yesrs of age (under 18 team basically what you see enter fa youth cup and play against simialr football league youth academys in league format) you basically get the left overs of what other academys have released who might be good but are deemed to not have what it takes to become professionals.
Cat 3 you get funding for age groups 9 to 18. You can sign players from 9 years of age and coach them so many times a week (this is where we will start seeing football league olayers come through, players who have had academy coaching since a young age and players we will be able to stop getting poached). This is the catagory the clubs only just achieved. These players will ve playing elite academies of a similar nature from the football league.
Cat 2 basically more funding and you get funding for a u21 development team too so you can hold onto young players for longer.
Cat 1 is your prem teams who enter there u23 teams into the EFL trophy.
The academy structure now specially is focused more on development of players rather than winning games. When we won the title 3 seasons running we all thought it was brilliant but the players in them teams never actually developed towards being football league players as they were not improving there weaknesses juast playing to there strengths on being a more physical and matured team.
There is evidence that the academy are improving the quality of players that they are producing.compared to 3 years ago players like Danny Fletcher, Joe Fitzpatrick and Tyler Blake weren’t even getting chances at conference north/south level. Now we have our youth graduates signing professionally with teams only 8 or 9 places below us in the league or getting loan deals in the conference (would love to see jimmy getting more game time but what bodes well for him is he’s at a big non league club who at the very least expect to challenge for top 3 and is scoring at a good ratio when picked and no matter what anyone says is getting more game time there than he would here).
If this trend continues it won’t be long before we start seeing players promoted from the youth team to getting first team football.
We had Keaton Ward transfer to Barnsley who I thought had he stayed at Mansfield could of been one of first to compete for a first team spot. Would of been good competition for George Maris.