Burnley’s academy has been on an upward trajectory since Jon Pepper took charge in
September 2016.
It was a challenge that the 47 year-old Pepper wanted to take on. He had previously been
academy manager at Bradford City and an academy coach at Nottingham Forest.
With Burnley’s promotion to the Premier League, came an emphasis on developing the
academy and from his previous role.
Under the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) initiative introduced in 2012, clubs in England
are given a ranking of 1 to 4 based on productivity rates, training facilities, quality of coaching,
education and their welfare provisions
Pepper inherited a Category Three club, but by the summer of 2017 Burnley were a Category
Two club.
“Productivity of players was quite poor,” he told the Athletic. “Since Jay Rodriguez
(who made his debut in 2007), the club hadn’t really had anybody properly come through other
than a few appearances here or there. One or two (including Alex MacDonald, now at Mansfield,
and Dan Agyei at Oxford) have gone to other clubs.
“For Burnley, to be entering the Premier League with such a poorly-performing academy,
it made the club realise that they needed to do something.”
They did do something. In January 2016, construction began on a new £12m training facility in
Barnfield. When it opened in 2017, with Pepper already at the helm, it moved his academy
alongside the first-team and the club’s staff, to a new base which included pitches
and an indoor playing surface, as well as state of the art support facilities which
catered to the club’s coaching, medical, rehabilitation, and educational needs.
Pepper takes pride in every one of the players who are part of the academy.
Lewis Richardson, a striker, turned 17 in February and has just signed his first professional
contract. He was on the bench in Burnley’s 3-1 Carabao Cup defeat to Sunderland this
season.
Joe McGlynn earned a Scotland youth international call-up this season.
And Max Thompson, too, who was signed this year from Everton.
“It is part of the (recruitment) strategy,” Pepper explained, on the decision to sign
Thompson.
“We have got big clubs in and around us and they might be churning out big numbers
of players and a lad might not be playing. Max wasn’t getting a lot of games at Everton
and he has come in and thrived.
“We try and make sure all the lads play. Our players go out on work experience to non-League
clubs, so there is always a game every week for 99 per cent of our boys. There are usually
two games a week for schoolboys.”
The club have also restructured recruitment since the arrival of technical director Mike
Rigg in November 2018. The former technical director at Manchester City and chief football
officer at Fulham assessed every level of the club and is continuing to make sure there
is a link between the academy and first team.
From 16 and above, the club can sign players from anywhere but those rules will change
once Brexit comes into effect and they will only be able to sign players from abroad who
are aged 18 or over.
Burnley have done that this season, signing goalkeeper Lukas Jensen, a goalkeeper from
Denmark, and Joel Mumbongo, a striker who was released from Hellas Verona. Both have
earned new contracts.
“We have a scouting network which recruits locally from Lancashire, Merseyside, Manchester
and West Yorkshire from six to 15,” said Pepper.
“It is difficult in terms of the competition. We are not trying to be the next Manchester
City or Liverpool. We have to do things slightly differently to the big clubs.”
The club use their community programme within schools in the area to help recruit. They
also understand the reality that they will not be able to attract the best young prospects,
so browse for those in academies, like Thompson, who may have been released or allowed to leave.
Burnley play 4-4-2 throughout their academy system. It is a formation that is the best
for “football education”, forcing players to run and work hard as well as be defensively
disciplined and creative, with tweaks then implemented.
“(Legs, Hearts, Minds) is a big part of our culture,” says Pepper. “We want players
to play with passion and energy. It sounds quite simple but a big part of what we do
is that work ethic. That ethos is why the club has been quite successful.”
Before being interviewed by the Athletic, Pepper was making sure that Northern Ireland
under-19 manager, Stephen Friel, who had travelled over to watch Burnley under-18 captain Chris
Conn-Clarke, was being looked after.
Pepper uses international call-ups as a marker to show the strides the academy has made.
When Pepper arrived, there were one or two players in action for their countries. “We
are at around 25 now over the last three years,” Pepper says.
“We have not bought internationals in; it is our programme. They play a lot more football.
The academy and club’s recognition has gone through the roof and now some of the lads
are getting recognition.
The week before, another two were added to that list, with U16 players Keelan Williams
and George Walters receiving their first call ups from Wales.
With the number of under-23 players who go out on loan, it allows more under-18s players
to join in with first-team training. Thompson, Conn-Clarke, Cain Patterson and Matty Rain
are listed off the top of Pepper’s head as he recounts those who have joined in lately,
for assessment by Sean Dyche.
In addition to which, under 23 players Mace Goodridge, Anthony Glennon and Ali Koiki have
all been part of a match-day 18 this season.
Every couple of weeks, Burnley hold a technical board meeting, which is attended by Tony Loughlan,
the first-team coach, during which every age group is discussed and information is fed
back to Dyche. The first-team staff attend as many youth games as they can. Dyche, his
assistant Ian Woan and Loughlan were all in attendance for the win over West Brom in the
last round of the youth cup.
“Each day, I will look out the window and I will see a couple of the under-18s training
with the first team,” says Pepper. “That’s the norm here. A lot of the Premier League
academies are on different sites or at different ends of the training ground. This is different
and very attractive
for
a player.”