We are now in a position to provide supporters with an update on our successful Academy programme ahead of the 2022/23 season.
Our Under-18s squad will be led by James Oliver-Pearce next season as we look to build on the success that we have achieved over the past few years.
The following players have been offered professional contracts ahead of the new season, after successfully completing their scholarships:
Quaine Bartley
Josh Hallard
Marcel Campbell
Ben Mason
Ethan Sutcliffe
More news on their contracts will follow. On behalf of the Academy I would like to send our best wishes to Aaron Jones and Abdi Alli who will be departing the club after not being offered professional contracts.
We are also excited to confirm that the following players will start their scholarships next season and will form part of the U18s:
Kai Jennings
Leo Young
Reuban Amissah
Oliver Downs
Max Foulkes
Harry Sidwell
Archie Stevens
Tom Wilson
At the beginning of May we started our annual internal audit, looking at all departments, staff, players and methods. We reviewed all things that went well, things that we need to change or tweak as well as setting new objectives we want to achieve in order to maintain our vision of being recognised nationally as a development programme.
We have clear KPIs that allow us to measure our programme - in 2020 we set ourselves a target of bringing silverware to the programme, it was the one part of our programme that we felt we were missing.
That season we travelled to Rotherham to win the EFL Youth Alliance Cup – and this season we topped that by winning the EFL Youth Alliance League title.
It’s equally as important to recognise the achievements that can’t be measured, the little wins that when accumulated make a huge impact on our growth.
For example taking the boys to Manchester in February half term to play Manchester United, not only allowed us to pit our programme against one of the best development models in Europe, but it has also created memories for our players that will now be cemented in their memory boxes.
There have been many milestones reached, at the same time we have also detailed areas where we fell short – one thing we all agree with here is we are only really scratching the surface of what we can achieve.
Positives
- U18s won the Youth Alliance U19s League for the first time ever.
- A total of 185 starts made from Academy players in the first team (an increase of 215% from the previous season).
- Jack Rudoni won the club’s Young Player of the Year and Player of the Year awards.
- Three U18s were called up to represent their national teams at international level.
- Victories across multiple age groups against top academies including Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal.
- Eight academy graduates made their senior debuts (Marcel Campbell, Aron Sasu, Quaine Bartley, Josh Hallard, Issac Olaniyan, Luke Jenkins, Ethan Sutcliffe, Dylan Adjei Hersey).
- The Academies self-managing programme being recognised by the LFE.
- U18s matching the Academy’s best-ever victory in the FA Youth Cup, beating Woking, 7-0 in the First Round.
- Academy held its first ever stadium games programme at Plough Lane.
