Surely we must be looking at our own academy model and structure with not so much a critical eye but one that is focused on improving it dramatically? The outlay of £4.2m per season is not insignificant, so therefore we should be trying to maximise the return on investment from the bottom up.
It comes back to three key questions:
1) How do Rangers attract (and reduce their chances of missing out on) the best talent from Scotland?
2) How do Rangers attract (and reduce their chances of missing out on) the best talent (at academy age) from outside Scotland?
3) How do Rangers provide the best possible facilities, infrastructure and pathway to give the academy players the best possible opportunity to become first team players?
Somewhere along the the line, at this moment in time, it isn’t working and hasn’t really done for many years.
Personally, I would be looking at networking with clubs with the most successful academies across Europe. Say for example, Benfica, City, Feyenoord, Ajax and Liverpool for example. A variety of countries, no doubt with nuances to each of their set ups. How are they structured? What are their focuses in terms of player type/ game demands/ training and competition level for their age groups etc etc. in effect: what makes them more successful in bringing through their own prospects to have an impact at first team level.
Then, I would look within our own academy and its culture. Does it have alignment with these other clubs in key areas? We might have aspects that will bear fruit in future years, like Rangers Ready for example but there may be other aspects that require improvement or indeed significant change.
The culture around the academy has to be right. Murmurs of discontent spread and this comes across in other posts on this thread. You aren’t going to be an attractive proposition in this instance and parents will take their children elsewhere. Fact of life. This, before anything else, has to change.
Change brings resistance, granted but we have to align with what is working well elsewhere. It is a basic business model for success. Aligning with the best but tweaking for our own environment is the only way that our academy is every going to provide value for money and therefore more players that are first team ready.
To fully implement this for lasting success, you have to have the right people driving the change over its initial period. If Zeb Jacobs does leave or indeed isn’t the right man for it, we need to appoint the right person to do it but we also need someone with the appetite to look outside of their own views and at what is working well for other clubs. It will require quite significant changes in ‘the way we do things round here’. If that involves us looking to push our players at older age groups by looking to join the English system, go all out to do it.
If we don’t change, we will just be doing the same thing as we’ve always done and expecting different results and that is the first sign of laziness and idiocy.
