The Academy

I have been trying to get hold of a copy in any form of "Portsmouth:A New Era" by Dr. Sulaiman Al Fahim, the prospective new owner of Pompey. This has been described as a 48 or 200 page book of proposals for when the good doctor takes over the club from July 24th onwards. David Kelly of the Talk Sport Show is reputed to have read it and said if the take over goes through we will be the luckiest supporters in the world. He described the proposals as "Simply amazing!"

Idly in the days leading up to the 24th, when I hope the takeover will be officially announced as completed, I have been thinking about what I hope the future will hold. I have gone beyond the short term of who will be the manager and who will be the players brought in for next season. Instead I have looked a little further ahead at the Academy and at a possible new stadium.

In this post I will try to deal with some of the ideas re the Academy. I don't know much about the Pompey Academy as it is presently structured except to observe that, according to the official website, another seven students have joined it this pre season. I also know that Paul Hart was appointed to act as director of the Academy. I believe the Academy should be the keystone to everything that Pompey does.

We should be competing with other clubs for the very best English players and we should be improving the standards of local Pompey players. We need to develop a Pompey style of play that informs every level of the club and its feeder schools and youth organisations and local amateur clubs throughout the city and Hampshire. We should build up European, African, South American, Arabian and Asian connections and feeder clubs as part of the Academy set up.

The Academy needs to produce players who can seamlessly step up into the reserves and the first team/squad, because all levels of the club play the same system. I would love to see the reserves top every competition they enter and to be considered the envy of others - scouts buzzing around at every match. I would love to see the Hawks as part of the bedding in procedure if the Blue Square rules permit.

The output from the Academy should replace the need to buy in stars generally. I concede that Pompey still need to be in the market for stars but only the ones who fit the Pompey style and who extend it. The academy output should be Pompey blue throughout so that the Blue Army rallying cry rouses their blood as much as it does ours.

I would love to see the Academy work with feeder clubs throughout all the continents but starting perhaps with Western Europe and moving east into Croatia for example. I am not advocating restricting our search for players to Europe (see above) but rather developing relationships with suitable clubs to bed in foreign players before bringing them into the Premier League.

I believe the Academy to be a bedrock for the future of Pompey Football Club and I believe that is what Dr. Sulaiman Al Fahim believes as well.