Tuesday 16 July 2013

The Blues Academy: how do they do it?


Jordan Mutch. Jack Butland. Nathan Redmond. Yes, all of which we’ve let go for a fraction of their worth, causing depressing fantasies of what might have been. But the other similarity is that they’ve all come through the Blues academy. In fact, on the 22nd December 2012, no fewer than 7 academy graduates featured in our match against Burnley. It’s certainly fair to say that in our perilous financial situation, our brilliant academy has been the saving grace, producing so much talent.

So what’s the secret behind our academy? How do they do it? I went to visit Wast Hills to meet up with the manager, Kristjaan Speakman, and discuss the method behind the magic…

“You’ve been Blues academy manager for 2 and a half years now, how would you rate your time in charge?”

“I think it’s certainly work in progress as ever, there’s been a lot of changes with the format and structure of the development within England with the introduction of the EGLP some 18 months ago. So really my time coming into this role has coincided with that, and I on a personal level, have been very pleased with the direction it’s gone, I’ve had fantastic support from the club, from the manager here, and ultimately we as a group have been successful in bringing through one or two players. That’s not just my time in the last 2 and a half years, but that’s the people and the staff who have worked at this football club, I have been fortunate enough to be here for the last 7 years for the likes of your Nathans and your Jacks, seeing them come in and then go through, and unfortunately leave as well.”

“And last season, the academy finished 7th and reached the 5th round of the FA Youth Cup, how did you feel that season went?”

For us, the league format is a vehicle for us to try and produce the players, we would very rarely on any given Saturday be playing our best team. It’s a development programme, you’ve only got to look at last seasons’ games when we’ve got schoolboys playing who are 2 or 3 years younger than the average age of that team. So for us, we do want to treat the games with the respect they deserve in terms of trying to win the games, but sometimes with the teams we put out, we’re putting ourselves at a slight disadvantage, maybe due to the size and the structure of the team compared to the opposition. So it’s very difficult to gauge success based on the league format, because if you’re going down that route you’ll be picking the older, stronger, more physically and tactically and technically developed players, but for us, if they’re competent enough they should already be playing for the U21s. You’ll see players playing within our academy programme, we had last year a boy Josh Martin who an U14 and he made 6 appearances in the U18 team. If you’re playing players like that, no disrespect to that lad, you’re not going to compete as well as someone who’s 18 years of age playing against him. For us, the success is the output at the end, it’s players getting professional contracts, players featuring within the manager’s squad, and ultimately, players being in the team and then second of all, assets for the football club who are potentially worth some money.”

“So it’s a lot more of a squad game than senior football, and a case of giving everyone a chance?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s giving everyone a chance. There has to be a fairness across the floor because we’ve had to go with around 22 players, so all them players had been selected for a reason. So yes there’s a need to be able to progress them, but ultimately we’re looking for the ones who can go on to be in the manager’s squad that’s why we invest in the academy programme. We’re looking for players who can go into the first team, but within that, not all players need the same things. Some will need to play in the U18s, some will need to be in the U21s, some will be at the level they should be knocking at the manager’s door. So it’s a case of having a programme for each one of those players, the games programme at the end of the training week, is their opportunity to try and test themselves in the work they’ve been given. Obviously, as they go through the continuum and they get older, they have to be able to perform in those games, as they would in the first team.”

“You mentioned the success of Butland and Redmond, do you think that seeing them break into the first team inspires the academy lads to step up their game?”

“Definitely. If you’re 10-15 years of age, you don’t have the experience the staff have got or anyone in the wider public, to be able to see or plot the progress of players that are currently playing at the highest level. For them it’s very difficult because they constantly come up against obstacles whether it’s their own development, their own physical maturation, being able to get in the team, all these different things, how do you get to be a first team player in the manager’s team? So, one thing when I came back in 2006, one of my criticisms would have been at the time is those young players didn’t have any players who had gone through the academy and been a real success at first team level. There was one or two dotted around that had come in at different times, but I think it’s much easier for the coaching staff to identify the players now Jack Butland, Nathan Redmond, because a lot of the players here are aware of those players, know them, and have an affinity. It’s an ability for us to be able to say: ‘this is what that player’s done’, ‘this is how this player did it’, ‘don’t worry about that, because that happened to him’. They can see the plot get through and ultimately, through the academy programme, they can get into the first team and be very successful.”

“Do you think that academy players are easier or harder to motivate than senior players?”

I don’t think there’s any difference within the motivation, I think the motivation comes from the individuals. I’m sure if you went round and you did a research project with first team managers and you’d discuss with them in terms of motivating a player then hopefully, the process of getting to the first team whether it’s for our academy or the manager’s bought somebody in, the motivation of that player in: ‘is he a winner?’, ‘does he want to win?’, and that belief and desire to be the best player he can possibly be, I think that would be in all processes. I think part of what we’re doing, we would have the same issue as any manager, you’ll have personalities that are easier to motivate and there’ll be personalities that, that’s an area they need to try and improve upon. But maybe that’ll be one of the factors if they don’t progress through the ranks.

“And when players don’t make it at Birmingham City, I imagine one of the hardest parts of the job is telling a player that they’re no longer wanted. What sort of approach do you take? Do you tend to take a line of sympathy or professionalism?”

Which age group are you talking about?

“I meant generally, say U16s?”

The under 16 bracket is probably the worst bracket, because with those players, you’ve got potentially the boys who could have been at the academy for 8 years. You’ve seen them grow up, you’ve had interaction with parents and the family over a long period of time, then it boils down to the academy programme making a decision on whether that player has got the potential to make it to the first team, and obviously we could then be offering them a two year scholarship. That for me, is one of the darkest days in the calender because if you are giving that person some negative news, then obviously they’re not going to potentially be that happy with it, and like anybody, we’ve all been 16 years of age, if you were getting that sort of news at 16, it could be quite crushing. We think we deal with it in the best possible manner. From an academy perspective and from a personal perspective, I’m quite comfortable in providing that negative information if it is a no, if I know in my heart of hearts that that boy has been given every opportunity. I won’t have them eating, regardless of whether different members of staff feel that the player is a yes or a no, until I feel there’s a criteria that that boy had had every opportunity to provide the data and the information and the stats and the observation to us to say he’s a yes or a no. Ultimately it’s down to a discussion with myself, the player and the parents, in the way that the bad news has to be delivered. I think as long as you set out the process as how it’s going to happen, so people know what the decision making process is, when it’s going to happen, and how it’ll take place. 99.9% of the time the conversations are very amicable, and there’s a support network to try and set players up with other clubs or organisations and education pathways to make sure that they progress through. The Birmingham City Academy experience should be a good experience. It should be a good experience if you’re a Jack Butland and you get sold for a multi-million pound deal, and it should be a good experience even if unfortunately you only get to 16 and you don’t make it. There’s lots of other avenues to take, there’s lots of players who have got a no at 16 and have gone onto be professional players.”

“At U18 level, how much emphasis in training is placed on the physical development of players, and how much on ball control and technique?”

“Our programme is heavily emphasized on technique and being able to handle the ball, so the passing and receiving, and all the components you would sum up within that. The physical side of the game you can’t get away from, the Championship, Premier League level is a massive aspect of whether a player can perform or not. So from a physical perspective there’s a lot of work goes on to try and make sure the boy is going to be physically ready, it goes back to what we spoke about earlier with all the boys at different stages, so it’s making sure they’re getting what they need at their stage. We’ll have a 16 year old on the scholarship programme who’ll be built like a 14 year old, but we’ll also have a 16 year old who might be built like an 18 year old. There’s quite a big disparity between the two, so there’s a number of prehab, weights, strength, conditioning programmes that go on, individual exercising, and within the training programme, there’s a warm up, and physical development work. Warm ups within every session, obviously that has to be tailored to the periodisation of the season, so at the minute we’re heavily into physical exertion and making sure the boys are fit and healthy to be able to last the rigours of a 40-odd week season, and then obviously as we go through the season it’s a case of just topping that up but we’ve got the GPS, and heart rate monitors and everything that you would want from a first class organisation, so that we keep our eye on that to make sure the boys are where they need to be, which is no different to the first team level.”

“What do you tend to look for when assessing the potential of a player?”

In terms of what we’re looking for at Birmingham City we’ve been quite clear with our documentation and our philosophy going forward, in the type of player that we’re looking for. Our programme is heavily based on being able to handle the ball, and we’re constantly looking for players and to develop players who are able to handle the ball, ideally we’re looking to develop Premier League footballers. We’re very much hopeful that our first team will get back into the Premier League, at which point, we’ll have to produce Premier League footballers. The players that have come through the academy into the first team have gone on to play for Premier League clubs, so hopefully we’re pretty much on course with that. It would boil down to where the player is at what stage, and the higher up he goes, can he handle that level of football. It’s all very well talking about training and playing and practising, but sooner rather than later, certainly between 18 and 21, you’ve got to be able to handle the first team environment. That’s the training environment to start off with, then the games environment, it becomes about performance.

“You talk about the possibility of producing Premier League players, if the first team gets us back up into the top flight. But do you not think that partly because we’re now a Championship club, and partly because of the financial situation, that that has benefited the academy in some ways? 

Yeah definitely. There’s lots of clubs that have been through or are in a similar situation to ourselves, I think it just goes to highlight the benefit that academy programmes are for clubs, sometimes that can get overlooked. On the broader scale it’s because the opportunity to go and get the ready-made product is there, but for this football club over the last 18 months, we’ve not been in a position to go out and it’s provided an opportunity for a young player here or there to catch the manager’s eye. The great thing about our club is that the manager has seen that and he’s taken these players and you’ve only got to see last season, there were a number of occassions when he’s picked the younger players over the senior players who have got umpteen appearances in the football league. I don’t think that’s ever changed, I think there’ll be a number of players that have a fantastic career at the football club who will have only got in at the start because someone got injured. That’s sometimes how our environment operates. I think with our new U21s group we’ve got, and the way that’s designed, it gives a platform for some players to play every week between 18 and 21, the manager here watches every single home game of the U21s, so everybody has an opportunity to catch the manager’s eye, and ultimately it’s his decision who he picks.”

“You mentioned that he’s picked a lot of the youth players ahead of the more seasoned professionals, who have arguably done at least as well. Do you think the importance of having a strong academy is underrated in football generally?”

I think it has been. You’ve only got to look at the development of the EGLP over the last 2 years, to identify that clubs recognize the importance of the academy because they’ve all voted to put this in place. Custodians of the club must have understood the importance of the academy, and within that, some have understood that it’s not been paid as much attention as it perhaps should be. There’s a number of clubs up and down the country who have been advocates of academys because of their academy system, and they reap the rewards of that. They’ve reaped the rewards in terms of players playing in their team, or sold players on. We would like to think at the current time, with the way that football has gone and the development of the training ground, the staffing structure that we’ve got in place, the first team manager that’s here, that we would be one of the best places to be at the minute if you were a young player, if you want to get into first team football. But ultimately, they have to be good enough. It’s all very well saying you’ve got the academy programme, the manager wants to pick young players, but those young players have to be good enough, it’s not a free ride. If they’re not good enough then the manager has to look elsewhere, our job is to try and make sure the manager hasn’t got to look elsewhere. Across the board, all positions are looking at a squad he’s going to have to bring in players to compliment, hopefully, what you’ve got. But there should be a base of young players that are home grown, you’ve only got to see the affiliation that brings with the fans, with your Mitch Hancox, your Callums and your Nathans of this world who are Birmingham people, you’ve only got to watch training at the top with the first team squad there’s more than a handful of local boys, playing in and around that hopefully, one or two more can break into the first team.”

By Gabriel Sutton
My thanks to Kristjaan Speakman for the interview, and to the academy administrator, Lyndon Tomlinson, for making this happen.

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