KT2 & trigger - I get the lottery analogy - but surely an entity in debt can't afford to gamble on the slim chance of winning a transformative payback in years to come - unless the odds are truly stacked in our favour. But that's all part of the commercial assessment.

Not a glib response at all kt2 but the best example of that must be Exeter and Ollie Watkins.

Besides the P&L focused commercial rationale for an academy there is also the element of fortune, if that academy is successfully selling decent volumes of players. Provided decent sell on clauses are used there is always the chance a player goes for mega bucks down the line and pays off the debt in one fell swoop. The more players that are sold into the market, the more tickets in the draw you hold. Ollie Watkins etc.

Laurence, I thought maybe cigar smoking rosette man was recovering from being accosted by Paul Bowgett during a reserve match, but that would have been several years later.

As discussed on here the other day, the term 'working capital' is stretched in many different directions. I think the pretty clear implication of what was said was that it wasn't just lending us money to cover operating losses (hence distinguishing it from the loan that has been offered to us by one of the directors). We were given no clue what the quid pro quo was, however.

By the way, I went to see Hamnet the other day. Who knew Joe Lewis was a dead-ringer for William Shakespeare!

I’ll tell you what I suspect the motivation of the individuals behind such an SPV will be. They will take a stake of 23.6% from the Collective and then facilitate access to some working capital (which will via some form of loan). In a few years when the Club then runs out of money, they will either offer to convert their loan into equity – obviously at a much lower share premium – or they will be in prime position when dealing with the administrators. Providing working capital to the club will have a similar effect to dealers providing access to smack to junkies. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

The odd thing is that the view was the investor's return would come from selling on the stake in the future, not from the club making/ distributing profits to its owner. It's a bit like Bitcoin - an asset that pays no income and whose return depends on there being a "bigger fool" to buy it from you for more than you paid for it. Sometimes it will work for the investor and sometimes not, but, as OI says, there seems no shortage of rich people keen to give it a go.

I suspect that motivations and measures of success vary quite widely between different owners of football clubs. In the days of ancient Rome, ambitious patricians used to sponsor gladiator displays to further their popularity. Some things don't change.

That said when Graeme Price was asked that exact question at the “Meet the Board” he didn’t give a similar answer. He implied that the Collective were looking for a group of individuals who could form a Special Purpose Vehicle and purchase up to a maximum of 23.6% of the shares, whilst also providing access to low-cost working capital – in return for a potential payback at some future point through an “Enterprise” valuation model. This suggests that whoever came together in a SPV would be seeking a commercial return (nothing wrong with that) rather than making an effective donation because of the warm feeling of satisfaction it would give them.

I think the club have in the past spent a fair bit of time thinking about KPIs for the academy. Apart from player sales, the ability to recruit players into the senior team more cheaply than from external transfers is also part of the equation. Hence, the number of appearances by academy graduates in the first team is a significant metric.

OI – it’s an interesting conundrum. Perhaps it’s similar to the motivations of people owning Racehorses. When I sold my 2nd business back in 2005, I threw myself into developing and coaching a sporting talent hotspot for young kids. I undertook all of my coaching qualifications and pumped a load of money into getting it off the ground. 15 years on we had produced 9 Olympians, including a number of finalists and medallists and secured a number of British, European & world Records. That was my payback. It wasn’t financial, but it was probably the happiest time in my life and the achievement I’m most proud of.

Can we put that money towards the contract staff who pour the beer?

All EFL academies receive funding, monies from Premier League. There are also lots of grants available. When we applied for academy status it was near £300,000 iirc. There are also funds earmarked to help pay salaries for specialist staff that academies are told they must have.

6MDM - Harvey Elliott at Villa is a current example, if he plays many more games Villa have to turn the loan into a purchase and they apparently don't want him.

There was an article in the Financial Times at the weekend (bear with me here), that maybe shows why there are plenty of rich people willing to throw money at football clubs. There are in effect two elites, the rich but boring people (bankers?, INEOS owners?) and the cool but maybe less wealthy folk (actors, artists, sportspeople etc.). Many of the former are willing to throw money at the organisations around the latter because it gives them an aura of cool. The thrust of the article is that corruption occurs where the two groups meet. Anyway, I'm not sure how much a League 1 or League 2 club is part of the gilded elite but maybe that answers jg's question about why would anyone cover the losses of EFL football clubs.

I know Koppel sacked Terry Burton for playing Peter Hawkins, which triggered a bonus payment because he reached something like 50 appearances so this sort of arrangement is not uncommon.

Leds, perhaps some of our lower paid players are only paid enough to sit on the subs-bench, if they actually got on the pitch they'd need to be paid more.

6MDM - In a similar fashion to the criteria necessary to tender for County Council contracts (which require Living wage undertakings and a range of Community benefit criteria) it may be that only companies who agreed to Living wage tender requirements, like Aramark, were able to tender for our catering. Clearly that may not be the case.

My understanding is that around 20% of current L1 & L2 clubs don't have an Academy - including Tranmere, Accrington, Crawley, Barrow & Harrogate. I'm not necessarily passing judgement on whether we should or shouldn't - and I acknowledge that Junior Nkeng is an incredibly exciting player. I simply say that we should only have an Academy if the Commercials stack up.

How does club know agency workers are paid the London Living Wage and it isn't the agencies keeping the extra themselves as extra margin? Agencies take a percentage of wages as their margin so even if they were not they still make more money because of our generosity.

Sounds ideal OI .you don't throw money around till you can afford novelty projects etc.

I thought we received some central funding for having the academy? Not to cover the full costs, but certainly a worthwhile amount.

In a purely capitalist world we should scrap the academy (not to mention the women's and girls' teams). The Premier League clubs more and more hooverr up anyone remotely talented and then dump them at 16 or 17 if they aren't going to make a profit on them (that is capitalism of course) so we have few talented players left at the club when they get to the end of academy years. We'd be better off with an under 21 group where we try to pick a few of the better discards who might actually be sold later or move into our first team squad.

Henry Ford gave his workers a decent wage so they could afford to buy his cars.