Following an extensive review of our football infrastructure, including our Academy and our player pathway, we have made some key changes to make best use of our £2.2million annual investment in youth development.   

The aim is to ensure that the Club gets a better return on that significant investment by developing rising stars who can break into and be integral to our first team squad.

The issue of getting young players into the first team and playing regularly is one that is not exclusive to Aberdeen FC. That transition challenge is faced by almost every Scottish Premiership club, to varying degrees, and has been getting progressively more difficult over the last decade.

The Club highlighted several recent contributing factors in its statement following the Connor Barron training compensation tribunal last January. In particular, the consequences of Brexit on the UK transfer market and the lack of meaningful progress on updating the training compensation process / matrix used both domestically and internationally.

As part of our review, the Club has reflected on its own performance in this area and challenged ourselves on what more we can do to deliver better outcomes.

We’ve had difficult conversations around whether the structure we have in place at AFC is optimal, and whether a continuation of doing the same things over and over will produce different or better outcomes.

We concluded that Aberdeen is fully committed to our Academy and staying at Elite Level status within the Club Academy Scotland (CAS) framework.

And we remain committed to the development and cultivation of talented young players and to providing a meaningful pathway that better readies those young players for the rigours and expectations of playing for the Club in the Scottish Premiership and, hopefully, regularly in European competition.

However, we have accepted that we have not adequately resourced this youth-to-first-team transition area and determined that our best young players, playing in a season-long, non-competitive youth league was not giving the Club or these players the best outcomes. With the Scottish FA’s new flexibility around co-operation agreements and loans, there are better ways of getting our best young talent first-team ready.

Dons Director of Football, Steven Gunn explained: “Given the challenge that Scottish football has in getting emerging talent into a first team environment, the decision has been taken to adopt a different approach, focusing on quality and not quantity.

“Whilst our Youth Academy has done well in terms of team performance and international selections, ultimately, we are measured on our ability to get these players into the first team and that’s the part that’s been a challenge, not just for us at Aberdeen but across Scottish football as well.

“As a result, our young players won’t be taking part in the newly adopted CAS U19s programme, but we will compete in the new CAS U17s format where the team will be predominantly made up of our schoolboys playing up an age group.

“When we assessed the individual needs of the players against the outcomes of our own review and the one carried out by the Scottish FA about what is the optimal pathway for young talent, we determined that being involved in a CAS U19s games programme isn’t the best route for our emerging talent.

“At the start of each season, and during periodic reviews throughout the season, we will make assessments on each individual player to decide where the best place is for them to get game time.

“The introduction of the cooperation agreements / loans will offer far greater flexibility and the opportunity to expose our best young players to senior, competitive football at a much younger age. We can also use standard loans, the U17s games programme, and of course, drive players towards the first team as early as possible.

“Allied to that, we will be operating an additional bespoke games programme to give our players international experience and various cup competitions so there’s still lots of opportunity for game time but there will be a shift in the day-to-day focus of the players towards more of an individual assessment, rather than just being team focussed.”

This emerging group of talent will be managed by a Transition Coach. This new role will be an addition to the current coaching staff to help nurture our young talent and assist with the seamless integration of promising academy players into the first team environment.

“We are quite far down the line in terms of our recruitment of a transition coach and hope to have someone appointed in the coming weeks”, said Steven.

“This is a critical role, so we need to ensure we get it right. The Transition Coach will work alongside manager, Jimmy Thelin, and the wider first team coaching staff to help ensure a smooth and effective pathway exists, bridging the gap between the academy and the demands of senior professional football, technically, physically and mentally.”

All these changes at Youth Academy level will also spark a change in approach at the top level in terms of profile of the first team squad.

Steven continued: “This group of young players, sitting under the transition coach, will train with first team on a daily basis. We need to have belief they can take that step up because they will get exposed to first team football more quickly.

“However, we also need to trust that we are still going to be competitive because ultimately, we must win games of football. We are committed to keeping the pathway open so that when those opportunities do arise the space is there for our young players.

“We also recognise that whilst Aberdeen sits in the heart of a large geographical area in the Northeast of Scotland, the population density and therefore volume of youngsters playing football, within a commutable distance of our training facility, puts us at a disadvantage to some of our competitors elsewhere in the country.

“We must, therefore, take a much more aggressive approach to strategic recruitment of younger players, both from Scotland and abroad, to complement the very best players progressing from our own Academy.

“This is something Aberdeen has deployed with great success in different periods of our history and has brought forward players like Willie Miller, Alex McLeish, Arthur Graham and current board director Willie Garner. The Club has committed additional budget both operationally, in youth talent identification and in potential transfer and compensation fees to maximise our outcomes in the development of young players.”