I think it's Parish that won't want to relax after 40 points as he will be aware of the £1m per place on offer so will want to go all out to climb the table

In fairness, until recently our youth players were incomparable to Chelsea's, and we were never in a position to promote youth players as frequently. You only have to compare the impact Chelsea's youths had in the championship at Derby (Mount, Tomori), Wigan (James), Swansea and Villa (Abraham) to our loanees, failing so far to make any impression even at League One level.

Part of the investment in the academy seems to be to do better in the highly competitive youth market, and I agree that having a track record of promoting young players quickly is of course going to help the club attract the best players. I'm sure it will have occured to Abraham, Hudson-Odoi, Tomori and Loftus-Cheek that they would get a game with us, and not be cluttering up the bench or out on loan, which is what happened to them as soon as Chelsea were allowed to spend money again. In that sense we could, as you say, be the more attractive proposition in the hugely valuable and productive South London market.

Whilst it's great to have a good, nationally competitive youth team to promote from, I'm less sure about making the promotion of youth players central to the business plan, which is what would have to happen for us to promote the likes of Rak-Sakyi as quickly as he would like, and might get in Germany.

Firstly, nobody has ever been able to maintain the production of stellar players forever.

Southampton had a great crop over a three or four year period, with Bale, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, Shaw, Lallana, Chambers etc, but these things go in cycles and the ones they rely on now just aren't all that good. Nobody will be paying tens of millions for their current crop, and it's been a very long time since they made that kind of profit. What happens to the business model then?

Secondly, do we want to be a nursery club?

Look at Dortmund, literally targeting he very best young players in the world. They will turn a handsome profit on Sancho, Haaland, Reyna, Bellingham etc, but at the same time, their team is further away from catching Bayern Munich than ever. They are a huge, historic club, playing in front of 80,000 people, and they seem to have become a nursery for richer clubs, including the one they are trying to catch. What's the point in that?

I'm sure it helped balance the books when Southampton sold so many great youth players as a League One or Championship side, but I can't really see how it helped develop their club once they were in the premier league. It didn't help West Ham back in the day either.

It is of course vital to develop more first team players if we want to get past the glass ceiling we have hit, and for the reasons I list above I hope we are uniquely placed to do so, but youth team players should compete with established senior players and new signings as part of a meritocracy. If that means losing a talented kid to German football, that's unfortunate but acceptable.

Bostock is 30 next year. He could be just what Hodgson is looking for by then!

The interesting thing I find with the academy and players wanting to leave is that I can't think of a single player in last 15-20 years that has left the academy before properly breaking into the first team that has gone on to be truly succesful and / or ahead of where palace are. Bostock, Hall, egbo, razak (sort of) and Robinson spring to mind to those that have left and there is obviously a fairly long list of those that have been highly rated, stayed for x years and then gone onto bigger things. Wonder if players know /realise / are told this