Ashton: Category One a Possibility, But it Doesn't Excite Me - Ipswich Town News
Blues CEO Mark Ashton has played down the significance of Town’s academy moving to category one status.
Town missed out on category one by 0.3 per cent in an audit in 2014 when the current system was instigated and it has continued to be a long-term aim. However, Ashton doesn’t see it as a hugely important step for the club to make.
"It intrigues me why people think cat one is a wonderful thing,” he said at last night's Fans' Forum. "It’s a possibility. It doesn’t particularly excite me.
"What’s more important is how we develop players though our youth system that are ready for Paul Cook’s first team as quickly as possible.
"We’re cat two, which is really important because that protects us from a value perspective, so if we sell or a club tries to take one of our youngsters, we have a financial set of parameters that are in place.
"Cat one is something where, other than the games programme, there is very little difference from we have at cat two.
"I’m more interested in how we get those young players ready for Paul’s team, and that includes expanding our loans programme.
"I want to have a quality of player in the academy and U23s, not a quantity. I don’t want to warehouse players just for the sake of keeping them.
"We’ve got to have real quality that get ready and are competitive for Paul’s first team.
"We’ll be looking at the whole of the academy and the U23s and the development system moving forward because it’s something that’s going to be really, really important to us.”
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