BlueinBosnia wrote:blues2win wrote:The sell on percentage is perhaps more relevant. The Academy business model obviously involves raking in cash for graduates far more than promoting the odd youngster to the first team.
This is what it seems. I remember around the time we sold SWP to Chelsea, our Academy was said to cost something like £2m per year to run, and made an annual average of a few hundred grand in transfer fees, with the SWP transfer basically ensuring its sustainability for the mid-term. I wonder how much it costs and earns these days: A player like - to take a random example - Ryan McGivern would have probably been on under £2K per week while with us, while nowadays someone in his situation will likely be on over ten times that amount, plus we have far, far more players due to both the nature of youth football and the fact that our players are attractive loanees for clubs both in the UK and abroad.
We’re now the “business” that we used to take the piss out of the rags for being.
