Paul Hall Going

[LoftusRoadLad]

PAUL Hall has left his role with QPR by mutual consent.


Having been with the club for more than a decade after initially joining as a Professional Development Coach for our Under 18s in 2013, he moves on with the best wishes of everyone for the future.

https://www.qpr.co.uk/news/2024/july/02/paul-hall-departs/

[QPROslo]

First it was Ward. Now it is Hall. Nourry and Marti have started a proper house cleaning.

I am not able to judge the job of Ward, but in the case of Hall, he has not helped that many youngsters break into the first team. Based on that fact alone a change was probably coming.

[Sussex]

The clear out was a long time overdue.

[Isleworth116]

Honestly, not surprised. Not often, I used to watch warm up. Paul Hall would be preparing strikers before match. They'd pass ball to him 20 yards out, rather than lay ball off so they could take shot, he'd kick it back to them as hard as he could. They'd miscontrol it, blaze shot over bar. Pointless him being there.

[FurtiveFox]

Best of luck to him.

Has been a difficult time and I am sure he has put in 100%.

We have though needed wholesale changes at the club and like others assume this is part of that.

[SheepRanger]

Very difficult to produce first teamers out of our academy when all the top local lads go to the prem teams and get poached off us too.

We seriously need to consider whether we need U18s and below. Get the U23s with lads that fall out of prem teams

[FurtiveFox]

Get that Sheep but at same time we are reasonably large fish so shouldn't we be poaching youngsters from L1/2 clubs etc?

[QPROslo]

Very difficult to produce first teamers out of our academy when all the top local lads go to the prem teams and get poached off us too.

We seriously need to consider whether we need U18s and below. Get the U23s with lads that fall out of prem teams

When the bigger clubs poke all the most talented academy players we have, it seems pretty pointless to have teams from U8 to U18, I agree.

However, from the owners point of view it might still make sense. We need to remember that any costs connected to running the academy do not count towards FFP. If the owners have money to spend, but cannot spend more than the FFP limit, there will never be any trade-off between spending money on a new striker or spending money on the academy. The latter does not influence the money we can spend on the former.

However, if we get some revenue from selling academy players, directly through a compensation in line with UEFAs compensation system for youth players or from sell-on clauses, these can be booked as income to strengthen our FFP head room. Hence, owners with deep pockets don't need to bother too much about the costs, but can enjoy the rewards, as it will help FFP. Hence, they might not be too fuzzed if they put in £1 and get 50p back. It might still make financial sense for them, if it means we have a bigger FFP budget and can spend more on getting the first team promoted to PL. This is one of the reasons that bigger clubs such as Chelsea have huge academies.

Over the years, I can only recall one smashing deal coming directly out of the academy, and that was Raheem Sterling. According to The Guardian the switch to City alone gave us £7,8m, and we might have got something when he signed for Liverpool. Other than Sterling, I can recall Furlong, Lumley, Kakay, Drewe and Kolli coming through the academy system of ours during recent years. Even though sales amounts have been modest (£1,5m for Furlong), they have represented value for our first team. If I am not mistaken, we got some money for Troy Parrott and Josh Bowler when they left, even though they had not played for the first team.

I do not think U18 and under cost too much to run every year, given we have the facilities in place already. The costs might be in the range of £1,5m to £2m annually, if the incremental costs is predominantly salaries of coaches and other staff. It could well be that our owners find this to be an affordable lottery ticket they are happy to buy every year, knowing that every now and then they can expect some reward, if not always that much. If you add up what we have got out of the academy, the net loss has probably been modest in the grand scheme of things.