whoareya wrote:The Exeter City model c&p from the BBC website :
"To sell one youth player for £1m is something most League Two clubs would hope for maybe once a decade.
But Exeter City have produced three of them in the past three and a half years, and players from their academy have earned the club in excess of £5m in transfer fees.
In fact, the Grecians have sold players for fees totalling more than £3.5m during the past two transfer windows alone - while the rest of League Two's 23 clubs earned somewhere between £4m and £4.5m between them.
So how do they do it?
No other choice
The club is fan-owned, so there is no rich benefactor to throw large sums at transfer fees.
And while that has its problems - no free-flowing source of money and an ownership structure which allowed a group of supporters to effectively hand Tisdale his notice - it is good news for young players.
How do they do it?
Exeter have not been shy in investing in their academy - some of the money generated from the sale of Grimes to Swansea in January 2015, Ampadu to Chelsea earlier this season and Watkins to Brentford last July have gone into building a new synthetic pitch, improving grass surfaces and investing in other infrastructure.
"The club really support the academy with facilities. It doesn't just happen on its own, it needs investment for the academy to keep running, and it shows that there's some thought into the future."
Yes but it was not all plain sailing for Exeter, just 4 seasons ago their supporters were enraged when they were under a transfer embargo for having to take out a £100k loan from the PFA. They had over 4,000 trust members at the time so it would be interesting to know how much if anything they contributed in terms of monthly donations.