Sheffield United outperform European champs (& Sheffield Wednesday) in key metric to lay promotion foundation
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Sheffield United’s academy produced more playing minutes last season than both winners of Europe’s top club competitions, as the Blades laid the bedrock for another promotion push last season. United’s tally of 9,321 minutes last term was the 13th best in the whole of England.
Only Leeds United and Hull City featured higher in the table, compiled by PA Sport, than the Blades, who left a host of Premier League clubs trailing in their wake as well as Champions League winners PSG and Europa League champions Tottenham Hotspur.
Much of that tally would have been down to Sydie Peck, the youngster who featured in the majority of United’s games last season, and would have been higher but for Oliver Arblaster’s season-ending injury. Youngsters including Femi Seriki, Andre Brooks and Ryan One also had valuable experience of first-team football during the Blades’ promotion push, which fell at the last hurdle with a cruel injury-time defeat to Sunderland in the play-off final last month.
A number of academy graduates also played elsewhere in the English leagues over the course of the season, including Harry Maguire, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Aaron Ramsdale in the Premier League - with the Shirecliffe academy once again proving its worth.
But the results also once again highlight the importance of United’s academy getting a much-needed category-one upgrade, to give the Blades a better chance of holding on to their young starlets - or at least getting a fair price when they are prized away by clubs higher up the food chain.
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One of their recent success stories, Will Lankshear, was scooped up by Spurs and received a European winners’ medal after Ange Postecoglu’s men beat Manchester United in the Europa League final last month, with United effectively powerless to keep him once a category one club made their move.
Elsewhere Chelsea’s academy gained top spot in the Premier League, with 20 academy graduates playing just over 28,500 minutes across the season - both for the Blues and other clubs - while Liverpool gave the largest share of their own first-team minutes to homegrown players.
At the other end of the scale Brentford were 274th of the 275 academies represented, ahead only of Rochdale, while fellow Premier League side Wolves also produced just one player. Meanwhile United’s city rivals Wednesday were ranked 53rd, with 3,876 minutes.
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Sports science company Kitman Labs partnered with the Premier League in 2023 to launch the Football Intelligence Platform, a centralised hub for performance and medical data which forms a key part of the league's Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP).
Stephen Smith, their chief executive, told PA: "It's only the last couple of years that we're starting to see kids who have come through a full pathway and been supported by the EPPP. We have younger players coming through that are capable of playing at a higher level much earlier, much more consistently.
Sheffield United’s impressive results show trend “only the beginning” for English football, says data expert
"I think we're only at the beginning. As we continue to bring players through these pathways, we're going to continue to see homegrown players playing first-team minutes. I think it's a really exciting period for the Premier League and UK football."
For clubs up and down the pyramid - led by Chelsea - the importance of developing players to sell has also never been higher. “It's not just generating players for their first team,” Smith added. “It's also generating sales and revenue.
"When you think about the importance of profit and sustainability rules, having a club that's developing revenue through their academy network that is supporting the first team is a dream for any club.
"There are only a certain number of places in your first team. All of the players you develop, they're not all going to be able to stay with you. If that means you can develop somebody world-class, sell and bring in other world-class talent that supports your style of football, that's great."
THE FULL TABLE OF ENGLISH CLUBS BY ACADEMY GRADUATE MINUTES PLAYED, 2024/25
(All totals rounded to nearest full minute. Clubs shown with identical totals have different numbers of seconds and are ordered by that measure.)