Protest against EPPP

[Jobbo no.11]

Saw this today. Just wondering if anyone else had seen or heard anything about it! interesting to say the least!

http://www.fiveyearplanfanzine.co.uk/Ne ... er-29.html?

[Jackson Corner]

Nicky Hammond is in favour of it. It's already been passed so I can't see how a fans boycott will change anything sadly.

[taipeiroyal]

Reading voted againstit
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/10/football_league_votes_in_favou.html#299200

[ZacNaloen]

The club said they voted for it

[Svlad Cjelli]

The club confirmed on Twitter that they voted in favour of it, despite some worries aboit the "compensation package" - which to me is the worst thing about it.

EPP and how it is likely to affect Reading is discussed here : http://thetilehurstend.co.uk/2011/10/24/well-and-truly-eppped-off/

[mr_number]

I do wonder whether teh PL deliberately kept this quiet in advance of the vote, to prevent people really knowing what was going on... Although, maybe the media continued to think that the millions of FL fans just aren't as important so they didn't report it.
I can kinda understand the club's arguments why they voted in favour, but it's a big risk for us, and it's close to a death sentence for lower league academies, if not the clubs themselves.

[FiNeRaIn]

Not sure what EPPP is, is it some thing which saves the club money?

[Svlad Cjelli]

Not sure what EPPP is, is it some thing which saves the club money?

http://thetilehurstend.co.uk/2011/10/24/well-and-truly-eppped-off/

[FiNeRaIn]

There is no way our club are that stupid to agree to that...i'm not having that until I see it confirmed from the club. I know they like to do anything to save a penny here and there but that takes the cake, we wouldn't be that retarded.

[Svlad Cjelli]

Hmmmmm, the Club's Tweets from the end of last week confirming this seem to have vanished from their Twitter feed.... most odd! I wonder why .....

All that remains is

Reading FC
Just spent a good 20 minutes with Nick Hammond talking about EPPP - huge plans ahead for Academy football in this country #readingfc
25 Oct Favorite Retweet Reply

But luckily a number of Tweets from Jonny Fordham, who spoke to them about this in detail, confirm that they did vote in favour.

[FiNeRaIn]

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Free reign for prem teams to march in and take any young academy prospect for peanuts all because we wanted to save a few quid per season. Fvck off.

[Barry the bird boggler]

Doesn't necessarily follow that a kid would move just cos Billy Big Bucks showed a vague interest. Said youngster and said youngster's family would have to be in agreement and may not feel it actually in their best interest to change clubs due to extra travelling and lack of opportunity at the end of it all. Ultimately if a clubs Academy is run well and kids regularly move into the first team squad and then break through into the team itself then what is there to gain by going to a PL side (the likes of ManU, ManC, Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal & Chelsea aside of course)

[FiNeRaIn]

Doesn't necessarily follow that a kid would move just cos Billy Big Bucks showed a vague interest. Said youngster and said youngster's family would have to be in agreement and may not feel it actually in their best interest to change clubs due to extra travelling and lack of opportunity at the end of it all. Ultimately if a clubs Academy is run well and kids regularly move into the first team squad and then break through into the team itself then what is there to gain by going to a PL side (the likes of ManU, ManC, Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal & Chelsea aside of course)

Living in a dream world. Prem team shows interest...they're gone. Money rules the football player these days not passion or sense. Its been this wayf or the last decade or so and its getting worse.

[Vision]

Just to remove any doubt

Hammond: New Academy ruling will have positives for Reading FC
By Jonny Fordham
October 25, 2011

New proposals to how clubs run their Academies are not all doom and gloom, says Reading’s director of football Nick Hammond.

Yesterday Football League club’s agreed to accept the Premier League’s proposals to abolish the tribunal over player transfers when clubs can’t agree on fees for home-grown youths.

Instead, clubs will get a set amount per season the player has been trained by the club with additional fees negotiated in add-ons.

The Premier League powerbrokers had threatened to withhold funding of around £5.4million for youth development if the Elite Player Performance Plan was not voted through.

Under the new scheme Football League clubs are now guaranteed a set figure each season over a four-year period from the top-flight.

And Hammond, who admitted that there was a certain degree of uncertainty around the new changes, did admit that it wasn’t as bad as it had been made out.

He said: “Our stance is that our Academy and youth system is the cornerstone of Reading Football Club and has been for quite some time now.

“The chairman and the board have supported our Academy in the last number of years.

“We have worked hard to nurture players and bring them through and into the first-team.

“Restructuring the system has been frowned upon by many, but we feel there are a lot of positives to come out of it.

“For the clubs that want to, you can have a lot more contact with the teenage boys through day release from schools to develop talent.

“We had a group of school kids in just yesterday and working with the players from a young age is vital for their football education.

“The tribunal system is a contentious issue and there is always a concern that the big Premier League clubs will poach players, but there are the positives that allow more contact time with the players.”

The best youth set-ups will now also be able to poach players from outside of a 90-mile radius from the grounds, a rule which had been in place.

But Hammond added: “We feel that if you have a successful Academy that has a track record of giving young players opportunities and developing them, then you are likely to keep on doing that and attract players.

“Eamonn Dolan and his team do a lot of hard work and one of the best examples of that recently has been Gylfi Sigurdsson.

“No one from outside of the club knew about him until he was brought into our first team.”

Of course Sigurdsson made a record £7million transfer to German Bundesliga club Hoffenheim last season.

[FiNeRaIn]

There are ultimately NO positives if a prem club can selectively take any of your players for a couple of grand. Seeing as they get around 90 million in TV money alone a season....does anyone think this will be a problem? Its like walking into poundland with ten grand in your pocket, take your pic...buy the whole shop.

[melonhead]

not true- there are many examples of players turning down the prem in order to get regular footy.


it is worrying though i agree

personally though:

The first of these is the scrapping of the 90-minute rule. This rule currently says that an academy scholar must live within a 90 minute drive of the academy itself, and so limits the geographical area from which a single club can recruit youngsters. As this is now scrapped, the whole country is a free-for-all for the big clubs.

personally think that was pointess anyway, if a kid, and his parents want him to move, they should be able to go where they like, a proper parent woudnt want to uproot him from his mates, and send him miles away anyway.

The most contentious part of all, though, is the scrapping of the tribunal system which has always fixed transfer fees for the movement of young players when clubs have been unable to agree a fee – such fees have typically been judged according to a player’s potential. Under the EPPP scheme, when a young player moves to another club or academy (almost inevitably a Category One academy at a Premier League club) the fee will be set according to a set scale, designed to reflect the cost that the academy has invested in the player’s development, but not taking into account in any way the potential of that player. As an example, this development cost is fixed at £3,000 a year for development between ages 9 to 11, with a range from £12,500 to £40,000 for each year’s training for kids aged 12 to 16, according to the status of the selling academy.

if they manage to insert rules about further installment payments to the academy club, based on length of time at the academy, and level of performance/attainment achieved at his new club, that seems a better system to me.
but only if they do that, which they wont, so....



and this:

The Premier League powerbrokers had threatened to withhold funding of around £5.4million for youth development if the Elite Player Performance Plan was not voted through.

is a downright disgrace

[Barry the bird boggler]

Surprise, surprise no-one has the guts to stand up the the PL and tell them where to go. They certainly should not be allowed to blackmail the proposal through by threatening to withold funding.

The sooner things change at the top the better for everyone.

[Svlad Cjelli]

not true- there are many examples of players turning down the prem in order to get regular footy.

The clubs are relying on the fact that youngsters here have a clear have a clear path to the first team, which would be different to a PL club where they'd be competing agaisnt so many others plus expensive imports. [/quote]

This is the Jordan Obita argument, where we won his signature against PL clubs because we could offer him a better path to first-team football.

personally think that was pointess anyway [90 mile rule], if a kid, and his parents want him to move, they should be able to go where they like, a proper parent woudnt want to uproot him from his mates, and send him miles away anyway.

Depends on the emphasis and how much moneythe parents get effectively we'll have a set of "boarding schools" for kids, run by PL football teams. I very much wonder what safeguards will be in place to ensure kids get decent educations - especially as the vast majority will be released before they get to 16.

if they manage to insert rules about further installment payments to the academy club, based on length of time at the academy, and level of performance/attainment achieved at his new club, that seems a better system to me.
but only if they do that, which they wont, so....

There are such provisions, but they'll only kick in if the kid is successful - the majority of kids will probably end up on loan form the PL clubs to FL clubs, for which the club who developed them will get nothing.
If Gylfi - an obvioulsy promising player - had been lured away when he was still 16 we would have got fixed compensation for what we'd spent developing him only (less than £100k) with no recogniction on his potential.

The Premier League powerbrokers had threatened to withhold funding of around £5.4million for youth development if the Elite Player Performance Plan was not voted through.

is a downright disgrace

Well quite! If it was such a good scheme why did they have to strong-arm it through?

[Vision]

I'm wondering if it will affect teams deciding to play players at a very young age.

I'm thinking of someone like the lad Mason Bennett at Derby. He's precisely the sort of player that Grade 1 academy's might use this rule change to secure on the cheap as from watching the recent Victory shield games he's head and shoulders beyond anyone else at that level. Derby handed him his debut the other day (he would have been included against us apparently but it was a school night). Now will this happen more to demonstrate to the player that he has genuine immediate 1st team opportunities where he is or will clubs deliberately not play players at this age for fear of putting them in the shop window?.

[Svlad Cjelli]

All the big clubs have databases on all young players and keep tabs on any they're interested in, so I don't think there's anything to be gained by keeping youngsters under wraps.