Hereford United Chairman Andy Lonsdale has mentioned on more than one occasion that a key strategy of Hereford United is to develop young players and sell them on to help keep the club going.
In August Lonsdale told BBC Hereford & Worcester, “the investors that have come forward (Alpha Finance) want to carry on with the ethos that Tommy Agombar started here – the growth of young players, showcase them, and sell them on to bigger clubs.”
So, basically, get youngsters in for free, on cheap wages, improve them, give them the chance to showcase themselves and then sell them on for big bucks. Simple.
You’re probably thinking ‘what’s wrong with that?‘ well on the face of it, nothing. In fact, without looking into that statement too deeply, you’d quite rightly be pretty happy with it, it’s how clubs in the lower leagues have traditionally survived for years, but there’s just a few problems that scream out at me!
Problem number one: It appears there are a number of players who are either on non-contract terms, or are not being paid on a regular basis, and therefore that means their contracts are perhaps not worth the money they are written on. The result in both of those scenarios is that any club that comes in for a player can simply get them for free, or very, very cheaply.
Problem number two: Hereford United are in the Southern Premier, there needs to be a massive improvement in a player who can only find employment at a club in the Southern Premier one moment, and then in a short while are attracting the likes of Aston Villa. How much money a club in the Football League are likely to ‘gamble‘ on a player from the Southern League is likely to be relatively small.
Problem number three: Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). Through no fault of the current owners, the relatively recent arrival of the EPPP (accepted by the Football League in 2011) seems to pile the odds against a club of Hereford’s size getting a big pay out for any of their rising stars. There don’t seem to be many freely available facts about how EPPP relates to clubs in the Southern League (if at all), but going by League 2 guidelines, a player who spends 6 years with a team, could earn around £56,000 for the club. Hardly a club-saving windfall. One would imagine that a club in the Southern League would certainly not be able to pull in a much larger fee.
Problem number four: Contract length. Let’s put problem number one out of our minds, and take it that contracts are water-tight and paid on time and in full each month. A player for a Southern League team is unlikely to be on a contract much longer than 12 months, so any big team wanting to snap up that exciting prospect, could choose to either wait to the end of the season and grab them for free, or offer the club a small fee to see that player let go. There’s not much in terms of strong bargaining tools available for teams such as Hereford United.
We were all appalled by the amount of money Hereford have received over the years for players via tribunal, and now the club is at level 7 of the footballing pyramid, fees are expected to be considerably less.
There’s a reason why more and more Football League clubs are taking the decision to scrap, or cut-back their youth set ups. They just don’t earn the cash that they once did. Whilst football fans would love to see homegrown talent rising up through the ranks and into the first team, it certainly isn’t a model that can sustain a whole football club.
It will be interesting to hear exactly how much Andy Lonsdale expects to raise via the ‘showcase-and-sell’ strategy, because at the moment it doesn’t seem to be a strategy that can raise a great deal of cash.