Man Utd set to steal Sunderland wonderkid Joe Hugill from under Jose Mourinho’s nose in six-figure transfer from Alan Nixon https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/1153...twitter&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1588452135
The new CEO's first test. Sadly this is the state of football now and its not just us who suffer ... .... but we have to start making the most of our assets. Make sure we get future add ons, good loan players from these big clubs and as much money as possie. Sad but that's modern football.
That it, by all means sell them it's a solid business model, but make sure we get a good deal. Feels like we always buy high and sell low.
We need to make sure we are putting nice add-ons in these deals but more importantly the bigger the selling on fee we can negotiate, the better. Especially with a big club like Man Utd.
We're selling too early for it to be a solid business model imo. We need to be giving them a path into the first team at 17/18 and selling them on at 20/21 for it to work as a business model.
Maja showed how these kids play the system, as @Blond Bombshell says it's all screwed. Big clubs can just stockpile young players and sell them on if they lose interest in them. A huge collapse is needed before the game becomes a 100% business and zero percent sport. Haway the virus.
I cannot understand how these players , if as highly rated as they seem to be are never anywhere near the 1st team. Surely get them involved and value goes up. At the minute it is a phone call to SD, " we want player x , SD " ok , how much, done" . No plan just get what he can into the coffers
It's not Donald's fault to be fair - clubs are signing them from us before they're old enough to sign professional contracts. Nothing we can do about it. The players are always going to choose the bigger club when their options are Sunderland youths versus Man Utd youths. We need to offer them 3 things: a proper football education, a pathway into the first team at 17/18 and an opportunity to move on if it's for first team football at a bigger club. We need to be getting our star kids on 5 year contracts when they turn professional at 17 with increases at thresholds for the more games they play. The aim should be to maximize their value by the age of 20 and sell them.
Ryan Noble was highly rated. 2 thirds of our first team annihilated Newcastle’s first youngsters (including some “highly rated”)last season. And that’s a premier league kids side. As a third division club, our kids are going to jump ship if one of the big boys come calling. As @Simple Saffy says, just need to make sure the “future” deal is right. I don’t pay anything at Donald’s door for this. If a premier league club comes knocking on a Oxford junior’s door, would thee be any uproar? We may be bigger in stature than others in this division, but we’re still a third division side and, sadly , that’s the reality
At the end of the day, even when we were in the Prem any kid who was approached by the big 4 would have snapped at the chance and from memory we lost a few. We only got Maja because he wasn't deemed good enough by Palace, Fulham and Man City yet the way some go on. Reading over the road how some seem to think that we can offer the same wages to an academy product as the Prem sides ffs. Whilst i would love to see the academy produce at least 1 first team player per year, if it makes the club a profit it's worth keeping. Sure, we could play 3 or 4 of these kids every week and the same moabers would be complaining that we weren't investing enough in the first team.
As these players are so young, do we have any say in the negotiation with the predators, I am not sure we do.
I think the point is kids love playing football. These poor ****ers are getting tonked week in, week out. Now if we have lost some gems in there to massive clubs, it makes you wonder what the coaching is like at that level. If kids like playing football they aren’t going to automatically be away from parents, if they stood more of a chance getting first team games here. There doesn’t appear to be a route into the first team.
Makes you wonder what SD thinks about all of this. Is it worth investing in it if we lose the best players coming through for next to nothing anyway. He made a lot of noise when he came in about how the contracts we offered to academy players were more favourable to the players in the long term but it doesn't sound like anything's changed. We're a long way from Charlie Methven's Dortmund model.
We should be restructuring this whole club around the academy and instead we've got a squad of 27 senior professionals. We should only be signing players if they're to have an immediate impact on the first team. Players like Conor McClaughlin, Tommy Smith, Jack Baldwin, Josh Scowen, Semenyo, Leadbitter, Lafferty and Declan John have been a huge drain on resources. If we didn't have those players, we'd be no worse off. We'd have better finances and we'd be giving youngsters a chance. We could even incentivise the youngsters more. As an example, if we didn't have Lafferty so there was a spot open at least to make the bench and the likes of Hugill (or even Benji) had bonuses in their contract for making the bench, then playing minutes, then starting games, they'd have huge motivation to work hard and the rewards would benefit everyone.
I may be wrong but didn't someone a while ago say that most of our zczdemy players were actually playing up an age group? For example most of the U23'2 are actually U18's and so on due to the 23's being out on loan. I could very well be wrong
