Sunderland chairman Stewart Donald has angrily denied rumours the Academy of Light could lose its category one status next season.
Under the Elite Player Performance Plan, English academy’s are ranked on ten different criteria. No other League One club has the highest status, but it allows those that having it to play regularly against the elite and therefore makes it easier to attract and retain players.
Reaching and keeping category one status has not been easy for the Black Cats in recent years as debts mounted at the club, but Donald has made it a priority for his blueprint of the future.
So he was particularly annoyed when a report in the Daily Mail claimed it was under threat of being downgraded. He insists that is not the case.
“It’s had a massive effect for us in the academy,” Donald told BBC Newcastle.
“The academy has got cat(egory) one status, it’s got cat one status next year, it’s had more investment in it for the first time I think in ages.
“We’re looking at buying players this summer to put into the youngsters, to see if we can purchase our own talent (to replace) that we’re having poached from us.”
Academy graduate Josh Maja joined Bordeaux in January when Sunderland decided to sell rather than let his contract run out.
But much more alarming has been the loss of youngsters yet to even play for the first team. Arsenal signed striker Sam Greenwood last summer, and Luca Stephenson moved to Liverpool this season. Sunderland received compensation for both, but it was minimal.
It has not all been one-way traffic, however, with the Black Cats picking up Jordan Hunter after he was released by Liverpool last summer, and Jack Bainbridge from Everton.
Donald’s concern is that the Mail story will make it harder to keep and attract other promising young talents.
“We have parents in the academy going, ‘if you want to downgrade the academy we want our kids to leave’ - that’s going to cost us money,” he said.
“I got onto the paper and said where have they got that from and they said, ‘Well that’s the rumour.’
“We’ve got a cat one academy that’s one of the best in the country, it’s guaranteed to be a cat one academy next year and we’re spending more on it than ever.”
