After belatedly being given Category One status, it was always inevitable that Newcastle's Academy would undergo something of a face lift, and the green-lighting of the new Benton redevelopment earlier this month is the culmination of a long gestating plan to make more of the club's failing youth system. Even despite calls from Mike Ashley and his directors and executives over the past five years, the flow of youth talent through to the first team has been stunted, and it's still more likely that the first team will be filled with imports and national talents, rather than local ones, unless it's a League Cup game, or some sort of illness has ravaged the ranks. The plans to change all of that are good, even if there is more to youth development than a swanky new building and a renewed focus on local talent and presumably working with youth teams to syphon able players into the Academy as always used to happen with Wallsend and Cleveland and the likes. The coaches need to work better, and the culture of football needs to be better from top to bottom - with the pay-off of first-team football being a necessary point in the development of all of those new players. Otherwise it's pointless. But all of that aside, there's a logistical question that really needs to be answered: who is paying for all of this? We're told the new complex is a multi-million dollar one, and that Wonga have already invested £1.5m into the Academy as part of their sponsorship package. Will any of that money be used to fund the development, or were they operating costs? No doubt we will soon be told that there isn't a lot to spend in coming transfer windows as the club invests in strengthening the foundations to make sure we can compete on all fronts in five years (as Derek Llambias once told us we would), and presumably the running costs of an improved, bigger Academy will go up too. The concern that it will impact fans beyond just reduced transfer spending (if that is actually possible) comes from precedent: the Academy has already hit the fans in the pocket. Back in 2012, a year after introducing a £15 compulsory Membership fee, Llambias hiked the price up to £25 (saying the first year was discounted), and insisting that the money was needed, and reflected the club's commitment to not increasing prices generally:
We do not want to put prices up. People might say we have put membership up on the season tickets. But that is going straight into the Academy. It was discounted for the first year but that is going into the Academy because we need to find the money from somewhere.
That last sentiment is the issue here: if Newcastle needed that money in 2012, with the old Academy generating operating costs big enough to warrant charging fans more money, how much of a hole will be created by the new higher operating costs? Can we expect to see memberships go up in price again? Probably not - those memberships are probably now at saturation point, and the amount of new fans signing up will not be significant enough. So what else is the answer? Increasing match-day tickets would seem the most logical - and likely the most unsettling - option. Newcastle currently have some of the lowest tickets in the league, we're being suspiciously told, so surely a hike in matchday ticket prices wouldn't be that much of an issue in the bigger picture. Or at least that's what we will inevitably be told. The hole in operating costs has to be covered somewhere, and given Llambias' past moves - ratified by Ashley, and surprisingly successful - a price increase somewhere is inevitable.
