bux46 wrote:Taken from Richard Coopers statement on getting his well-deserved promotion
“As an academy, we are now striving towards category three status, which would upgrade the academy for the start of the 2020-21 season, under the criteria and guidelines of the EFL.
Does any of our fans know the category format, on how we advance ??
Yes....it’s all to do with money basically.
Cat 1 is mainly your prem teams and top champ clubs who have a budget of £4m (or something like that) and over to spend on there academy. These academy’s are allowed to sign who they want.
Cat 2 is rest of the champ clubs and some prem club and a couple lower league like Crewe and Colchester. They have to spend over a certain amount and also have a team In The under 21 or 23s league.
Cat 3 is what we’re aspiring too which would mean we can have our under 16s -7s compete in the competitive youth leagues against fellow football league clubs.
Cat4 is where you are on,y allowed to play in the U18s youth league and are not part of the u16s games program.
You get different sized grants given to you depending on what category you are. I think a cat3 academy gets around £220k a season in grants.