Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 79/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here
It is a decade since Charlton Athletic last survived relegation in the second tier. This football club that has been through the mill, including repeated ownership sagas that each threatened to leave their own decay. Twenty years after competing for a European place in the Premier League, supporters were left desperate simply for something to believe in.
For so long, hope persisted due to the famed history – and prolific present – of Charlton’s academy pipeline. It sits in the heart of one of the biggest gold mines of potential footballing talent in world football and is geared up to make the most of it.
In recent years, Ademola Lookman, Ezri Konsa and Joe Gomez have been the poster boys. But, under the stewardship of long-time academy director Steve Avory, the graduates have always been numerous and prodigious: Lee Bowyer, Carl Jenkinson, Paul Konchesky, Scott Parker and Jonjo Shelvey are the senior England internationals between 2002 and 2012 alone.
Charlton are in a period of recovery. Nathan Jones will almost certainly keep this team in the League One play-offs and give them a shot at promotion back to the second tier. Just as importantly, Jones’s team relies upon strong academy influence thanks to Karoy Anderson, Miles Leaburn and Tyreece Campbell. These boys are the present and the future.
But for all the advantages that Charlton have, and for all their magnificent work in developing youth talent in south London, significant challenges exist for football academies outside the financial elite in 2025. Economic inequalities, talent retention and short-term culture all make life harder.
On this Doing The 92 project, I wanted to make sure to reflect the issues and solutions within that system. It is a deliberate compliment to Charlton, to former academy director Avory and his replacement Tom Pell, that they always seemed the perfect club to spend time with and understand this ecosystem and the challenges facing it. The relentless work never stops…
Charlton’s academy is brilliant; no argument. In Training Ground Guru’s most recent productivity rankings (2023-24), it was rated as the 12th best in the English professional game, the second highest outside the Premier League that season (after Leeds United).
Academies in England are categorised into four types: one, two, three and four. Those in Category One tend to be Premier League clubs and they receive – and have to commit – more funding. There are also infrastructural demands, such as floodlit pitches at the main training centre. Charlton’s academy is Category Two, which creates a definite pecking order.
“The biggest difference is in the level of financial aid that you receive and the club contribution that you need to make in order to fill the requirements,” says current academy director Tom Pell. “But if you spoke to most academy managers in non-Category One academies, they would tell you that there are two main drivers for upgrading your level of academy.
“The first is that the higher level brings with it a better level of competitive football programme between clubs. The second, and this becomes the headline, is the level of compensation you receive for academy players that you lose through clubs of a high category acquiring them.”
“South London has always been a very prominent area for young football talent,” says Avory, who left the academy director role after almost 25 years in January (but is still working in a consultancy capacity). “I remember coming into this area as a teacher in 1979 and all the best players were in school football. We do tap into other areas of London, but over the last five or 10 years the reputation of our area has increased.
“I think it’s also true that young players from south London, east London, north Kent and where we are situated in the borough of Greenwich tend to be very hungry. They love the game and they do have plenty of role models now. That tends to perpetuate itself in terms of ambition of players and club.”
Understandably, there is also vast competition for that talent. Within London alone there are Category One academies at Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham. The south London gold mine is hardly a secret – scouts at elite clubs are increasingly putting resources into stealing a march on school and grassroots talent. The answer is to play on locality.
“Because we exist as a club within this area, we know that we have an association with it,” Pell says. “We’re in the centre of the sphere. But more than that, I can look parents in the eye and talk about our illustrious history of producing talent, whether you call that DNA or whatever. We don’t need to give it the hard sell and that puts me in a very fortunate position as an academy manager. Not everybody can do that with such authenticity.”
“We’re a family-oriented academy club anyway, so children and parents have always been comfortable coming into this environment,” Avory says. “But most of all, the key is to convince parents that their child will develop here as a footballer and as a person. Do that and gradually, year upon year, it perpetuates.
“So if Tom is talking to a parent about a child potentially signing for Charlton and staying with us for the immediate future, we can be confident in referring them to other families for advice. The evidence is there.”
Charlton Athletic 1-0 Barnsley (Tuesday 4 March)
- Game no.: 74/92
- Miles: 270
- Cumulative miles: 13,450
- Total goals seen: 195
- The one thing I’ll remember in May:At certain London grounds you can stand at the back of a stand and look over the city. Canary Wharf from the Valley is the best of the lot
Bringing local children into the academy, particularly when they are at a younger age and their parents work in the area, is one thing. Retaining them until first-team age is another entirely. All Category One academies can recruit any players from the age of 14 onwards provided the player is guaranteed access to a full-term education programme. That takes the threat national.
There are two simple answers to that: experience and pathways. Make sure children love coming to Sparrows Lane and tell their parents as much – they are more likely to stay. Make sure that those children receive coaching excellence, consistently – they are more likely to stay. Offer evidence of a reasonable route to the first team – they are more likely to stay.
“With players towards the top end of the schoolboy programme or the scholarship age groups, there might be more lucrative offers from a financial perspective but also an education perspective; that also becomes a really key point to parents,” Pell says. “We have to also evolve our programme to ensure that we keep up with the times and are able to offer those holistic elements.
“We have to ensure that there is an expectation that we will give players an opportunity. We have to be able to present to parents a potential pathway. Nathan Jones worked as an Under-21 lead coach here back in 2012; he knows the journey. That’s another opportunity for us with parents: the guy who picks the team on a Saturday afternoon has a really good understanding of what a Charlton Athletic player looks like.
“If it comes to a point where the parent decides that it might be better for their child to go elsewhere, at least we can look each other in the eye and say that we’ve done absolutely all that we can in our positions to try and retain that player. Ultimately we can’t solely control that.”
After Brexit, a point-based system was introduced for English clubs to sign players, with 15 points required based on a number of factors including league experience and international call-ups. An exemption can now be applied for that can be used as many as four times (dependent upon use of homegrown players), but the general rule is that recruiting young talent from abroad is harder than it was pre-Brexit.
Understandably, that makes things harder for non-elite clubs because Category One academies have more incentive to scout within the UK because those academy talents are likely to be a) easier to sign and b) worth more if they do progress to first-team level. Charlton’s local gold mine again gets raided.
“It has created a much more competitive market, because it means that the potential pool of players is a lot smaller,” Pell says. “Other clubs are in exactly the same boat, but they have bigger resources to put financial backing into players at an earlier, younger stage.
“We want to see young players get through in general. But it has made for a much more challenging market for us as a result: the same amount of clubs after the same if not more amounts of quality because of the increase in levels in the Premier League but with a smaller pool of players.”
Avory had been at Charlton for almost 25 years. He is far too humble to say it, but supporters I spoke to have: during periods of ownership uncertainty and league table misery, he was more responsible than anyone else in the club for retaining any belief in recovery. He is a staple of modern Charlton and every fan surveyed asks me to pass on that message.
Avory stepping down was inevitable eventually; he turns 70 this year. But the loss of Avory could easily have caused a loss of identity and reputation if it had not been handled well. Parents of academy kids adore continuity and certainty; Avory – and the ecosystem he had created – was a pull-factor for their kids to come to Charlton.
Charlton dealt with that by headhunting Pell with Avory still in position. For more than two years, he was able to work under and with Avory, a period that he says was crucial in learning the structure and ethos of Charlton. Steve is also still working, just not as many hours per week. Tom was very keen for Steve to continue. You can see why.
It’s also important to accept that change is inevitable. Charlton’s academy has 34 full-time staff, the largest department in the club. People will leave because they do fine work. The head of player care has recently been appointed by New York Red Bulls. By promoting excellence, you demand constant improvement in players and coaches.
“It’s really important that the academy management team has a flavour of newer staff that bring fresh ideas, but that’s consolidated by a number of staff that have been here through different owners, through different managers, through different challenge,” Pell says. “I think grey hair or no hair can be a benefit in this environment.
“The reason I say that is because, although there has been some change, and inevitably that will continue because of how the kind of ecosystem of academy football works, we are unusual in that there are key members of staff that have been here for at least 10 years.”
Over Avory’s tenure at the Valley, football has changed. There is increasingly a demand for more transfers and an impatience that shifts the focus from long-termism to short-term ambition.
Avory says that he never felt pressure to produce and that Charlton have always been prepared to provide pathways to young players; that made his job easier and more enjoyable. But in a world of extensive loan markets, deadline day culture and a third tier in which clubs have spent millions on players this season, it can be hard to keep fighting for academy talent getting a chance. The only answer, as they both say, is to make them the best that they can be.
“You can offer professional contracts to players who show potential, but ultimately there comes a point when they have to contribute to a winning team,” Pell says. “It’s as simple as that. You can throw them in, of course. But for them to have a sustained career here, which is what they want, they have to contribute to a winning team.
“There have been times when boys got an opportunity because the team wasn’t performing very well, but there needs to be something more. Get that right, and you can create something self-fulfilling. The bar gets raised and we all continue to raise our standards.”
In those circumstances, who and what Charlton are matters. It’s a question of perpetuation: because you can walk through the classrooms of the academy and see posters of Addick heroes, it makes creating new heroes more likely. Supporters want to see their team win – always will – but they will hold a special place in their hearts for a Campbell or Leaburn.
“The one thing that I have discovered here – and I probably didn’t quite appreciate it fully when I started – is that there is nothing that supporters enjoy more than a homegrown product stepping out at the Valley for their debut,” says Avory with a smile. “And there’s nothing that ever gives me more pride either. It’s the best feeling in the world when one of them makes it.”
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
Comments
A few points stood out for me;
How the academy is so highly ranked at cat 2, just after Leeds outside of the prem; and how integral it is to the identity and perpetuation of our club, with 34 full-time staff. When everything else inside the club may be threatened by such a range of factors as changes of ownership and cut-backs, and the performance or under-performance of the first-team, the academy has provided a focal point for continuity. I liked this paragraph especially;
“There have been times when boys got an opportunity because the team wasn’t performing very well, but there needs to be something more. Get that right, and you can create something self-fulfilling. The bar gets raised and we all continue to raise our standards.”
And lastly; "The head of player care has recently been appointed by New York Red Bulls." - EDIT- Chase Hill as others have clarified (thank you!)