FC United of Manchester FC United of Manchester FC United of Manchester Badge FC United of Manchester Pitch In

FC Academy future looks bright following restructure

FC Academy future looks bright following restructureJack Doyle and Tom Conroy have spoken about their excitement for the future with the FC Academy following the decision to switch to the youth set up full time.

Having coached the first team for the best part of a year alongside their academy work, Jack and Tom made the move to the Academy as part of the restructuring following Neil Reynolds’ appointment as Manager.

Having spoken positively about their time with the first team, both are optimistic about the future with FC’s youngsters.

Jack said: “It’s been a good experience with the first team. It’s been really good for the past year or so we’ve been doing it, a great experience for us but our main bread and butter is the academy, that’s what we wanted to focus on.

“It’s easier now we’ve got less distractions because the first team is a massive responsibility, a lot of time-consuming stuff. It’s good now we can focus on the academy lads and make it as good as it can be.”

Tom added: “Before we got the first team role, we were doing the academy anyway, now with us coming out of that, we can 100% concentrate on that.

“We will be developing these young lads, concentrating on pushing them through to the first team.

“We’ve seen quite a lot already doing that over the past couple of seasons which is a massive plus for the academy.

He added: “It just shows how hard the boys work and shows how good the lads are so it’s good that we can focus on that and help develop the club going forward”.

Looking to the future, Jack said: “Our main job is to feed players through to the under-21 set up.

“There’s a chance they can go and do their education with them as well.

“In theory there’s a way they can stay in full time football for five years, which is a massive plus for the club, should help us attract more players. And then hopefully they’ll get to the first team from there.”

Tom explained: “I think it’s good that every lad that is in the academy has got a target, if they’re in the 21s they’ve got a target of getting into the first team, the 19s Youth Alliance want to get into the 21s or even jump into the first team, the 18s into the 19s and so on.

“There’s always a target for everyone that they can push themselves to achieve and develop so to have that goal and that target for every lad that coming through the academy is great”.


First Posted ~ 18:00 Sun 4 Nov 2018
News ID ~ 8127
Last Updated ~ 16:00 Fri 19 Feb 2021