AFC Wimbledon Academy Manager Jeremy Sauer updates supporters on the recent, successful audit and the way forward. The Academy aims to continue producing more players, like Will Nightingale and Anthony Hartigan, who are ready for first-team action.
"As part of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) all academies are subject to an independent audit every three years. A successful result guarantees future funding until the next audit. Our audit was carried out last October by Double Pass but the results weren’t released until all academies had been assessed. We can now confirm that we have received our final report and have been recommended to the Football Management Team / Professional Game Board to receive Category 3 status.
"This represents very positive news for the club and of course for the Academy itself. A tremendous amount of effort went on behind the scenes from all our staff and support provided by senior staff at the club itself. Although it was a very challenging process, we aim to take advantage of the opportunity to be compared with other Category 3 academies and to identify areas where we can improve. As a result, we found it very rewarding and believe it will help us to improve our player development programme in the years to come. We would like to thank everyone involved in the process over the past 12 months for their dedication and hard-work.
"The report on the programme is across eight key performance indicators. We scored well above the Category 3 average in three areas and on or just above in three others. In particular our Vision, Leadership & Finance (which carries a weighting of 11% in the assessment), Football (36% weighting) and The Player (5% weighting) were close to the top of all other Category 3 scores.
"The one area we were unable to score highly in was productivity (20% weighting) which refers to Academy players who have transitioned to the professional game between 2002 – 2015. With the Academy only formally starting in 2011 this automatically put us at a disadvantage and has dragged down our final combined score.
"To cement this success we will receive a one day re-assessment visit next season to ensure we have successfully worked towards the various Key Action Points recommended to us by Double Pass. In the meantime we are continuing to develop ‘Home Grown and Hungry’ players ready for first team football at AFC Wimbledon."