New Town academy director Dmitri Halajko says moving the Blues’ youth set-up to category one is his main priority having taken on the role last month.
Halajko had been sporting director at Colchester United for two years until taking over at Playford Road last month, succeeding Dean Wright, who left to move back up north at the end of last season.
The 44-year-old is understandably still finding his feet in the position with the academy running teams from U9 to U21.
He says everyone at the club is aligned in maintaining the Blues’ long-standing focus on developing young players which goes back to the 1960s and Jackie Milburn’s time as boss.
"It’s always been a club which has had a proud tradition in youth development,” Halajko told TownTV For years and years gone by it was always a club that people looked as a shining light in youth development.
"There are the foundations here, it’s a club which believes in youth development. I think one of the most important things is that there’s a line right from the top. The top of the football club agrees that youth development needs to be a big part of this football club and then it’s got the history to prove also that youth development is an important part of this football club.”
Halajko has been in youth development for 25 years, working with current Blues first-teamers Sammie Szmodics during an earlier spell at Colchester and Ben Johnson while coaching the U23s at West Ham. In addition to the Hammers, he has also worked with Norwich’s U21s and Leicester’s U21s while the clubs had category one academies.
He says moving the Blues from their current category two status to category one is the priority, CEO Mark Ashton having announced the club’s intention to make the step up in March.
"I think one of the big areas will be the progression to cat one,” he said. "That’s something the club have been quite public in saying that’s where they aim to get to.
"At the moment, it’s about establishing a timeline for that, assessing where we are currently.
"I know what cat one looks like, I’ve worked at that level for 10 years, so we’re having a gap analysis of what’s needed to be put in place and then we can put a timeline in place and implement a plan that gets us there.
"At the moment it’s too early to say what that timeline looks like because I’m still working out where our baseline is, but I know what the destination looks like.
"I think if you work out where you currently are, then it’s quite easy to put the stepping stones in place to hopefully reach that destination.
"That’s the trajectory of travel, the timescale of how we get there and what we need to do at the moment isn’t totally established, but that’s what we’re working towards.”
He says the opposition the youngsters will face are the big advantage of category one over category two, that and the ability to recruit more widely.
"I think the fixture programme is fantastic for the U21s and U18s, especially,” he said. "There’s opportunities of playing against League One and League Two teams in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy [previously Papa Johns Trophy].
"There are also opportunities to play in the Premier League European Cup against PSV Eindhoven, Villareal, teams like that.
"And obviously week-in, week-out you’re playing against your Liverpools, Manchester Uniteds and your Chelseas also.
"So that fixture programme, it really is best-v-best and it really does challenge the players and taken them on to a new level.
"More stadium games as well, fewer training ground, more stadiums, more real environments. Some games on telly, some games where you get a crowd that’s a bit more meaningful.
"That environment is certainly a lot closer to real football than we currently have, so that’s a bit upgrade we would get.
"The other advantage I guess is that you get to have your recruitment a lot more national. At the moment, as a category two academy, we have restrictions on how far we can go and recruit people whereas category one, if we’ve got the infrastructure in place to support it, we can go and get national recruitment, which obviously makes our reach far bigger for Ipswich Town to pull the best talent they can.”