Cambridge United Academy has been ranked 50th - a rise of 10 places - in the latest Training Ground Guru Academy Productivity rankings...
All Category One to Category Three Academy have been ranked on the number of England-qualified graduates who made at least one league appearance in 2021/22 season across the top five divisions of English football.
The rankings produced by Training Ground Guru are the only publicly available resource of their kind, while Chelsea FC have topped the latest edition for the first time, the U’s academy has moved up 10 places since 2020/21.
The progress demonstrates that there is a real commitment to continue to keep producing home-grown players from the Academy and throughout the Club.
The 2021/22 season saw four graduates make their EFL debuts - Ben Worman, Lewis Simper, Liam Bennett and Kai Yearn. Yearn was also called up to England U17s and four apprentices were offered professional terms - all of whom began their journey at the academy from Under 9s.
Academy Manager Dom Knighton said, “Simon Austin and Training Ground Guru put a huge amount of work into these rankings every year. As an Academy, the rankings provide real clarity on the progress that we are making in relation to productivity. There should be a feeling of real pride from all of our staff both past and present and provide them with real motivation for future success.
"It is important that we don’t now just accept the progress we have made and continue to drive the programme forwards. In the last decade, we have gone from recruiting players to compete within the National League to now recruiting players to compete within League One and beyond, therefore the bar is constantly being raised.
"As well as measuring the productivity of our Academy, there are multiple other ways in which we measure our success. This could be through staff progression, academic progress, internal and external pathways, diversity in our games programme or the progress of our thorough life skills programme to help achieve our highest potential off the pitch.
"A huge thank you to all of our staff who should feel a real sense of pride, particularly those who have shown real loyalty and longevity towards the Academy over a number of years."
You can find out more about the productivity rankings by clicking here.