Profile of academy boss Jim CassellUpdated: January 23rd, 2007
It’s said that some men are worth their weight in gold.
With gold now priced at £314 per ounce, academy boss Jim Cassell has been worth around 40 times his weight in the precious metal to cash-strapped City.
Cassell’s academy has now produced players worth more than £40m - SWP went for £24m, Richards’ value has now soared above £10m and Barton was valued in the summer at £6m.
A former book-keeper and local government officer, Cassell’s playing career lasted only two games at Bury in the mid-1960s. After doing some scouting work for Oldham, he was appointed their chief scout under Joe Royle.
When Royle brought him to City in 1997 Cassell set about re-organising the youth set-up.
In Blue Moon: Down among the dead men at City, author Mark Hodkinson describes him as ‘thoughtful and shrewd, candid and friendly, immaculate in a suit and tie and wire-framed glasses, the original Gentleman Jim’.
‘Gentleman’ Jim immediately brought his ‘fastidiously methodical’ approach to the job. “There was no one picking up the bits of paper off the floor, no one taking care of the detail,” he said.
The following summer he presented a 51-page dossier to new chairman David Bernstein and the board. According to Hodkinson, it revealed ‘a club run by people without real job specifications, where the hierarchical structure was muddled and essential facilities had to be borrowed, or were missing altogether’.
Bernstein spent £500,000 to implement the reforms, which might be the shrewdest investment the club have ever made.
Cassell’s first coup was picking up a 15-year-old Shaun Wright Phillips, who had been released by Forest, and he is responsible for signing Micah Richards from Oldham’s youth academy aged 14.
Other academy staff have also played a vital role. Joey Barton was signed by head of recruitment Barry Poynton after he was released by Everton. Before joining City, Poynton was Everton’s youth recruitment chief.
City also have a team of between 25 and 30 local scouts covering the Manchester area. “These days, if we sign a boy aged between nine and 11, his home has to be within one hour’s drive from Manchester. Between 11 and 14, he can live a 90-minute drive from Manchester,” Cassell explained to the MEN.
That attention to detail continues to bear fruit. The under-18 side is currently 10 points clear in the league, with more than double the points total of United and Liverpool (table here).
In Blue Moon, the author claims a fair amount of hostility was aimed towards Cassell in the late 1990s, with the academy boss portrayed by some at the club as ‘the school-teacher twit caught blinking in the hurly-burly of football’, whose decency was mistaken for meekness.
Let’s hope his true value to City is now fully appreciated.
~ There’s an interesting article at the MCFC Supporters Trust arguing that City might benefit from forging links with smaller overseas clubs.
According to The Times, these deals are becoming commonplace in the Premiership. Bolton, for instance, have forged links with a number of clubs, including Chinese side Wuhan Huangelou FC.
The only such tie-up City have made so far was in 2000, with Irish side Cherry Orchard FC. City paid £100,000 over two years to get first pick of the club’s youngsters. The result was the signing of Willo Flood, who was sold to Cardiff for £200,000 in August.
~ Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City is available from Amazon for £6.39 (+p&p) or from £1.80 (+p&p) for a used copy.