October 24 2011

Steve Parish

Crystal Palace chief Steve Parish insists the club's Academy will continue to thrive despite controversial new regulations imposed.

Football League clubs last week voted to impliment the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) which will see the tribunal system that sets fees for home-grown youth players axed.

Selling clubs will now get a fixed fee of £3,000-per-year for every year of a player's development between the ages of nine and 11, while the fee per year from 12 to 16 year-old kids will range between £12,500 and £40,000.

Under the new regulations, Crystal Palace would have got just £130,000 compensation from Tottenham for producing John Bostock instead of the £750,000 they received from a tribunal for the midfielder.

However, the majority of Football League clubs voted in favour of the new system as had they not, the Premier League threatened to withdraw over £5m of funding.

The lower compensation rule has upset clubs with successful Academies like Palace who voted against the scheme, while clubs who have not produced promising youngsters went for the guaranteed money up front.

Speaking exclusively to Holmesdale Radio, Parish said: "They can come into our Academy at 12 years old, they can say we want that one, that one, that one. There's very little we can do to stop it.

"The bottom line is, for the Premier League this is basically about taking as many kids as possible on the off chance that the odd one, maybe, will get into their team. If they don't, what they will then be doing, is selling all the players that they nicked off us for nothing, back to the lower leagues and it'll be a little business for them.

"We've got to play on the strengths of our academy, why is there an assumption that their coaching is better than our coaching? Why is there that assumption at youth level - it's not proven. There aren't more kids playing in the England team that come from Premier League academies than come from lower league academies.

"In fact I think if you do the research, there's more kids playing in the Premier League now, given that they're all coaching around the same hours, that come from lower league clubs. There is nothing proven that says their coaches are better than our coaches.

"It's not all doom and gloom. We've got a great academy. We've got a lot of parents that believe in our academy. We've got fantastic kids playing in our first team. That's an oppurtunity most parents realise they're not going to get at these Premier League clubs.

"I want to get the message absoloutely right on our academy, we're absoloutely commited to our academy and I want any parent or player there to think that we won't be doing anything other than re-doubling our efforts and finding a way within the rules to ensure that our kids get the best chances of progression in the game. What better example than the guys in the first team now."

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