Crystal Palace academy ready to compete with the best after show of faith from Steve Parish

The goal | Crystal Palace have the facilities to produce another WIlfried Zaha or Aaron Wan-Bissaka
Action Images via Reuters/Lee Smith
Jack Rosser @JackRosser_11 September 2019

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish recently revealed a three-year plan for the club, the cornerstone of which involves investing unprecedented amounts of money into an academy which, over the past two years, has provided the club's most expensive player.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka, promoted to Roy Hodgon's first team in February 2018, became the club's biggest-ever sale over the summer when he joined Manchester United for £50million. The academy's previous significant graduate is the Crystal Palace talisman Wilfried Zaha, who had a price tag of up to £100million placed on him over the summer.

The sale of Wan-Bissaka and the success of Zaha have energised the academy, which with further investment over the summer is now, according to academy director Gary Issott, ready to compete with the best across London and the country.

In previous seasons Issott's academy players had to share their facilities with the public, using the gym and the five-a-side pitches located on their site. Palace have now secured the lease to the site on an exclusive basis, while bolstering their coaching staff with vital appointments of Dean Wilkins and Shaun Derry, among others.

"There is no doubt the intensity of the support from the academy has coincided with Aaron [Wan-Bissaka's] success," Issott told Standard Sport. "That has just re-energised everybody about the academy and what can be achieved. That has helped everyone's enthusiasm.

"But to have our own site, to have a state of the art facility, it will take every department on 15 per cent, which is huge."

Parents of young players can often be wooed by the sparkling academies of London's top six sides. Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea all boast impressive facilites, while West Ham have a famed academy and have pumped £4million into their Chadwell Heath site.

Crystal Palace now have a sales pitch to match the best, and are on the path to gaining Category One academy status to move up yet another level.

"That is always the frustration [parents being tempted to top clubs]," Issott said. "We are all vying for the same players. London is 13 professional clubs, the north west is about 20, so these are the two regions where it is fierce. [In] year two of the Premier League we invested heavily in recruitment because getting the best players is vital.

"If you can have top class facilities and environment, that is what players and parents want. Dougie [Freedman, the sporting director] has come in and is looking to create pathways for young players to have that as well."

That pathway is vital. The current crop of U23s, for whom the investment has probably come too late to forge Wan-Bissaka or Zaha-esque careers in the Premier League, often hop over the road to train with the first team at their Copers Cope base, some 400 yards from the academy. Defender Sam Woods made his full debut for the first team in the Carabao Cup last month, and those examples of opportunity do wonders in bringing players on as young as ten.

So what of those players below the 23s, the ones who will take most from the investment from here on. Wilkins, who has been in his post just over a month, helped launch the career of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain when plucking him from the Southampton youth side straight into the first team following a substitute appearance in a heavy U21s defeat at Queens Park Rangers.

It hasn't taken him long to spot one or two in the Palace ranks who could follow a similar path, his first impressions are clear.

Fine example | Dean Wilkins helped launch the career of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain at Southampton
Getty Images

"A lot of talent," he said, without hesitation. "I have spent the last six weeks just trying to digest everything, watching coaches work and the teams play.

"My initial job is to adapt the philosophy slightly, just try and improve things. The potential here is absolutely massive, having spoken to Gary, Dougie and the chairman that is what attracted me to the job, I am super excited about what we can do, how we can develop things. We need to work together, every department together.

"I have had a lot of experiences in different environments, if I had to pick one that worked it would be the Southampton model, the reason it worked was because every department worked together to reach one goal.

"There was a clear plan in place, there is one in place here and with increased staffing that allows us to implement that even stronger than it is at the moment."

Wilkins was set a target of 50 per cent of Southampton's first team being made up of players from the academy during his early years. Palace are someway from there right now, but a target is something Issott would welcome.

"At the moment it is where we are, because of the situation we found ourselves in with facilities we have not been able to target set to that level," Issott said. "But I am sure the chairman would be keen. I think [we would like to have a target] because it gives you a goal and a target, there is no problem with that.

"It is all around players getting opportunities and players being good enough to take those opportunities.

"With Wilfried Zaha and [former manager] George Burley, George said 'give me your best player', so I gave him Wilf and I never saw him again, that is how it is but it is the players taking the opportunity and having the personality to take it."

Getty Images

There is a lot of hard work to come, and no player will establish themselves by luck. The new additions to the academy coaching staff are beginning to make their mark, Wilkins is planning to create individual motivational videos for each and every player to draw from and develop further.

It may take three years, it could take far longer, but one more £50million man from Issott's ranks will be a job well done, money well spent.

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