Former Sunderland academy manager Paul Reid has talked up the progress the club’s youth setup made during his time at the club.
Following the end of the 2019/2020 campaign, news broke of Reid‘s exit from the club’s Academy of Light, leaving with immediate effect.
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The 38-year-old’s exit came after a rather torrid year of football and development for Sunderland’s youth structure, seeing both the under-18 and under-23 sides fail to gain a victory in their respective league campaigns.
Reid’s exit followed a whole host of young players who left the Academy of Light over the last 12 months and he has now touched on the various improvements he made during his time a the club.
Writing on his personal Linkedin account and as quoted by Sunderland Echo, Reid wrote:
“Despite clear and obvious challenges regarding the position of the club, we made progress in a number of key areas:
– We successfully passed the independent PL audit to retain CAT 1 status (after previously being placed in special measures).
– By reassessing and streamlining all our processes we reduced the overall operational costs by 22%.
– Comparative academy productivity rankings by the PL/EFL improved by 48%.
– 100% of first team squads included at least two academy graduates. This is against an EFL average of 68%.
“At a club in a transitional period WE did a lot in a short space of time. Thank you to those that supported me.”
Sunderland are yet to find a replacement for Reid, despite having produced a club advertisement via their official website at the start of July.
A lot of what Reid claims are improvements and progress are unrelated to actual football and it is that problem which has seen the Academy of Light now short of being a Category One academy.
It does seem that although Reid has done well with the business side of things, the footballing development of young players has stopped, as proven by the woeful results on the pitch last season. The cutbacks have, though, probably not helped this situation.
Do you think Sunderland were right to let Reid leave? Let us know in the comments section below…
