By the way whoever said the England rugby match starts at 3.45pm is wrong it start at 4.40pm presumably the extra hour is TV uild up

Thanks Trigger- as you say, hadn’t even thought of that aspect- whatever I might think of some aspects of how our club is run I have never had any doubt as to the honesty of those doing so

Definitely read it as you intended Nick. Money laundering must be something in Laurence's mind ;-)

The ones that piss me off are those that arrive late then stand on the steps working out where they are sitting.

Laurence - obviously I was referring to ending up with a ground way too big for the club - I suspect that you may be the only person on here who thought first of the money laundering aspect but, to you and any others in that boat, I apologise if anyone thought that I was implying that.

Nick - the Darlington problem. Good grief. Your words are disgraceful. Who do think in our set up is doing money laundering? You really need to think about what you are intending to post, and double check beforehand. Rant over!

Re the point around being able to finance the stadium in non league forget about Darlington and the 25k arena as that was a step too far but a more realistic comparison would be Rushden where their owner handed them the club & stadium yet they couldn't finance the stadium and ended up selling to a property developer. The 6,500 capacity stadium was redeveloped in 1995 and closed in 2012 and was finally demolished in 2017

All good academy manager I didn’t read your post properly so my bad. I think the academy is generally one of the things that people see as best run within the club (obviously the first team will go through ups and downs based on level of competition.) Wish you nothing but the best going forwards keep developing those youngsters.

... and on your point regarding dropping down to NL South or lower - as you say, we don't have the figures but I would be very surprised if we could cover the costs of the PL ground at that level (the Darlington problem). You are probably right that we could find a solution (probably we'd sell the ground to Chelsea or similar and then look for a long-term berth at KM, or a similar non league ground). We might have a solution at that level, as some sort of "FCUM of the south" but I think that a lot of people wouldn't be interested in following a non league side with no scope for progression, so for those people (which I think would include me) there would be no difference between that scenario and one where the club ceased to exist altogether

$6m man - if we were a business with that sort of strong scenario planning we wouldn't have got to the position where we are forecast to run out of cash in 4 months (though with scope for a short-term loan to fend the crisis off for a while longer), with the main long term plan apparently being "find a minority investor who will also agree to fund our ongoing losses". Like you, I am interested in how the auditors signed off on our going concern statement for the year to last June and will be even more interested to see what is said on that topic in the 2026 accounts, assuming that we ever see them.

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Michael thanks for the response and because I was ranting I did forget Cox etc. And my point wasn’t to say the academy is rubbish. Which it probably sounds like. I have no issue that it works VERY well at the level it’s at. But the people running the club seem to think it’s operating at a point where it can produce EPL and Championship level players constantly and sell them, when they have a big value, to bail us out. I don’t agree that is a viable business plan. It relies on you guys finding unearthed nuggets AND being able to develop them in secret to an age and stage where they are going to bring the 7 digits plus a year we need just to survive. Looking at the history of that, the big clubs would definitely seem to be aware of the value to getting them before they can hit the big numbers. Which means if there is any big money to come it could be years down the line in whatever future compensation we get. Which is my point that it’s not a viable plan to bail out the club every year.

Timmy but he went at 14 before he became the big money and that’s where we struggle. We have E-L vultures all around us. They’re not waiting for these lads to get first team games and rack up a 7 digit value. They’re grabbing them cheaper.

Well played Michael, sometimes people don’t appreciate what they have and need reminding.

DO - I would love to know what the costs of running Plough Lane are, broken down by various categories and by various scenarios. We keep being told we could not afford it in non-league (which would have been a reckless decision to proceed with constructing it if that was the case given relegation from league one was a matter of when not if and we have nobody to fund our losses). I don't accept this as it is never backed up with anything. Any reputable business will carry out scenario planning and five year plans based on best, likely and worst case scenarios. The auditors should want to see this as part of their judgement around whether we remain a going concern. If they signed off the accounts without qualification in December knowing all about our cash flow issues then there will be levers we can pull. It's just we never get told what they are.

As we are talking all things Academy tonight, my understanding is that our academy is at the highest tier permitted for a L1 club. My understanding is that if we were to drop out of the EFL, our academy would automatically drop a tier, making it harder to sign the quality of players we currently do and much harder to make real money on transfers.

Welcome to Michael Hamilton. So pleased that he's registered. Working in the academy is probably difficult but so pleased that he wants to engage. Thank you.

academymanager - firstly, thank you for fronting up and posting on here. It is both welcome and appreciated. We all want what is best for the club but do not confuse perceived negativity with realism. If we see things clearly wrong (not your department - my only frustration is the conveyor belt of players gets poached before we see them if they are any good or released if they are not) then it needs to be raised, highlighted and discussed. Worrying about prospective players and parents reading on here is, with all due respect, not high on the list of priorities when we can see a financial black hole that relies on luck and a begging bowl to fill every year. We are unsustainable in our current guise. In the main this has generated some constructive discussion, especially given the professional backgrounds of many on here. We may not always agree with each other but our intentions are positive. To expect us to be all happy clappy about the club when administration is a genuine possibility in the not too distant future is both unrealistic and deluded. The whole basis that this club was founded on was not just accepting and doing what we are told. If some of the observations on here have made the PLC and DTB boards think (who do lurk on here I'm sure), then it is worthwhile, even if it puts off a prospective academy recruit (who if they are that much of a snowflake they are not going to go very far anyway).

Trigger: Nothing I say is based on emotion, its filling in gaps of knowledge and providing context. Nick, Woking: Unfortunately you are correct interms of the system, but that's why its important these forums are positive. So that the Nkengs, Jennings and co feel the love of the club. Keefy: All the sales I have mentioned have featured on the main website, its all public knowledge. The academy also featured in a sky sports documentary that again went public, which highlighted that since 2013/14 of all clubs that have raised over £5m in transfer sales from academy transfer fees, Wimbledon are 2nd only to Exeter across all 72 EFL clubs - if you go on youtube and type in Chasing The Dream, Sky Sports - it may come up.

Spike was reported as £400kish I think

Agreed Nick. The system is loaded against us and all other academies.

Part of any perception that the academy isn’t doing much comes down to the fact that the system is set up to allow PL sides to poach away the best prospects before they get close to playing for us (as per the big list of players in MH’s post below). That seems to be the way that the system has been set up by the PL and is certainly no fault of those running the academy and I assume that we make some money from that, but it’s not very exciting for us as fans. It is good, though, to see Nkeng bucking that trend, so that we actually get to see an academy product play for us.

Comms should keep us updated on non senstive news re academy etc. Lack of info from this club over the years has created a divide. Hopefully last nights meeting might be a new dawn.

Thank you Michael.

You said your name 🤣