Chapter Ten

I am currently sat in my office with both Luis and Steve Weaver recently hired from Wolves to serve as our Head of Youth Development at the club we are currently discussing about the players in our youth academy who could potentially slot into the first team and our youth recruitment plan going forward. 

"What are your thoughts about our youth players and who do you think we could potentially promote to train with the first team and eventually start games" I asked Steve 

"after spending the last few weeks at the club and going over their details and their training data from the previous season, I recommend Lingard and Rashford to begin training with the first team I will hold out judgment on other players" 

Luis seemed to be in agreement with Steve and said so 

"Alright Luis please inform Ancelotti to include both players into the pre season plans and any Youth players he deems fit for his plans now what are our plans for Youth recruitment" I asked both men 

"What framework do you want us to operate with" Luis asked back 

"What do you mean?" I asked 

"well there are two major framework a youth academy can follow either we follow a Barcelona like plan where we promote the best player to the first team based on our team needs or how good the players are a plan like this ensures we are not exploited in the transfer market unless it is a player we desperately need or we could follow an Ajax like plan where players we promote to our fist team are sold within a year or two for a very high price this ensures we make a lot of money from our transfer operations but we might not be able to compete due to us selling some of our best players every year" he explained 

"why can't we do both I asked him" I asked him 

"How would we go about it" he asked 

"while both the Barca and Ajax plan have their advantages they also have their flaws, Barca will always be exploited in the transfer market and Ajax can not compete in European competitions we can do a best of both worlds where we have players in the academy ready to step into the first team while we are also willing to sell certain players not just because of how much we can make but because we have someone better to step in to replace him while also maximizing our profits" I explained to him. They both seemed to be in consideration 

"That might be good but it will be expensive we will need an expansive scouting network to pull it off" Steve said 

"That is true but the expenses are not an issue I will allocate £ 50 million as a start up to begin our plans" I told them and they agreed we decided to end the meeting there and Luis went off to lay the groundwork for our plans