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Question I would like answered..


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Basfboom - is that you ?

An Owlstalk proverb.

When you spit your beer at this time of night, was the previous post really that funny or just too much beer ?

:biggrin:

New section/thread on Owlstalk proverbs Neil. That ones on me.

Edited by Mr Farrell
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Guest barrowowl

There's a lot more goes into them than their basic wage though. All varying too.

As Sean MacAuley says. It's impossible to work out.

I guess if it costs £500k per year to run you could work out how many players make it to the first team over say a five year period. Players that dont make it are of course a lost 'cost'. You would then need to add back any transfer fees received for academy players to come up with some sort of idea of what it actually costs to get a first team player from the academy.

I really can't be arsed to do the sums tho so over to someone else!!! :biggrin:

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Where it gets impossible is when you have some lads that may have been at the club since they were say 11 - while another player might arrive at 16 for eg

The drop-off rate is high - so the time invested in one player may be very different from his team mate

I suppose you could sort of take a lazy average - but i don't think it would do justice to the actual cost per player

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There's a lot more goes into them than their basic wage though. All varying too.

As Sean MacAuley says. It's impossible to work out.

I'd be surprised if Casio Bob hadn't been asked at some stage to cost out the figure (or something similar). At a WRC, especially one strapped for cash, I'd expect the youth scheme to be monitored financially on an ongoing basis, and these sort of criitical figures to be available at almost immediate notice. Although there will be some costs that you can't directly apportion, it's basic procedure to allocate them in the most appropriate manner across the relevant beneficiaries and departments, and work out such a figure on that basis?

If our accountant can't come up with a decent approximation of the money spent on the youth academy per graduate, we're paying him too much.

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I'd be surprised if Casio Bob hadn't been asked at some stage to cost out the figure (or something similar). At a WRC, especially one strapped for cash, I'd expect the youth scheme to be monitored financially on an ongoing basis, and these sort of criitical figures to be available at almost immediate notice. Although there will be some costs that you can't directly apportion, it's basic procedure to allocate them in the most appropriate manner across the relevant beneficiaries and departments, and work out such a figure on that basis?

If our accountant can't come up with a decent approximation of the money spent on the youth academy per graduate, we're paying him too much.

What do you call a "graduate" though - somebody who plays for the 1st team? Reserves? somebody taken on a pro contract? a scholar?

What about the amount of time they have been at the club?

What about somebody who has been injured and incurred substantial medical resources and costs against a player who hasn't ?

etc etc etc

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Where it gets impossible is when you have some lads that may have been at the club since they were say 11 - while another player might arrive at 16 for eg

The drop-off rate is high - so the time invested in one player may be very different from his team mate

I suppose you could sort of take a lazy average - but i don't think it would do justice to the actual cost per player

I'd argue that for the sake of working out how much it costs us to produce an academy player, the cost of putting the drop-outs through the system should also be factored in, as the winnowing down of numbers is all part of the process. Although the figure might vary significantly year on year, depending on the number of successful graduates, it is ultimately the figure you would compare with a transfer fee required to bring in a player of equivalent quality.

Failing to do this, and focusing on a single player, you could have an academy of 10,000 youngsters producing only one successful graduate per season, and the apportioned costs for a single successful player might only run into the hundreds of pounds. This really wouldn't be a fair reflection on the actual expenditure required to produce these two players, so IMHO a clumsy average - the apportioned start-to-finish costs of those in the year's graduating age group - would, in this situation, be the most appropriate and useful measure.

So CasioBob/anyone, how much did it cost us to produce this year's crop of youth players?

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What do you call a "graduate" though - somebody who plays for the 1st team? Reserves? somebody taken on a pro contract? a scholar?

What about the amount of time they have been at the club?

What about somebody who has been injured and incurred substantial medical resources and costs against a player who hasn't ?

etc etc etc

It would have to be someone who signed a pro contract if you are measuring the successful output. That is the stage comparable to signing a young prospect from another club, and seems a fair assessment on whether a player is a success or a failure in academy terms. If players in the graduating year have incurred medical costs then these have to be factored in to the expense. Would these be apportioned by hours with physio added to their individual costs of external/extraordinary treatment, or would the physio's time/salary be evenly apportioned or apportioned by estimate across the different years?

To calculate the figures you'd have to set an arbitrary graduation age (of 18?), and track the players who graduated and those who would have graduated that year, but dropped out, backwards from that point for cost allocation purposes.

It's possible in most, if not all businesses to produce useful and relevant costing figures, and even if it involves a degree of artificial apportionment of costs, I can't believe that for someone with a good understanding of the academy process, or working directly with people who do, and a head for numbers that it would be that hard to come up with a useful figure on which to base comparisons and assess the financial effectiveness of the venture.

I'm not saying I have all the answers. I'm just making suggestions as to ways of doing it, but if effective costing can be achieved in far more complex and intangible businesses and business processes, then I can't see why it can't be achieved in what is a comparatively straightforward situation of fixed and variable costs being spread across a measurable number of products.

Edited by Wise_Owl
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