IN TIMES of austerity, maintaining a youth academy is an expensive project but Swindon Town manager Mark Cooper has stressed that the Robins have an obligation to the community and the long-term future of the club to persist where others have not.

Under the terms of the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan - a top-heavy blueprint for the development of the game in this country - Swindon operate a category three academy, with more than 50 full and part-time members of staff nurturing over 150 youngsters.

It’s a significant burden on a small club, for little reward. Category three academies demand around £100,000 a year of investment with some outside funding from the authorities, although the EPPP recommends annual expenditure of £500,000 - while players can be cherry-picked by top sides for a pittance.

Compensation due for any scholar with eight years’ association to Town who happens to be pinched by a Premier League team would be a paltry £71,500.

That sum is made up of payments of £3,000 for every year spent in Wiltshire between the ages of nine and 11 and £12,500 a year between 12 and 16, with additional and more lucrative add-ons paid upon every 10 appearances the player makes for their new club.

If the player moves to a Premiership club that figure is £150,000 per 10 appearances, in the Championship it’s £25,000 and in League One and League Two £10,000.

With Town having already cut their first-team budget by a third - from £4.5million to £3million per annum - in less than a year, times are changing at the County Ground.

Further reductions of £1million have been targeted within the next 12 months, while another £1million is understood to have been shaved off the administrative and operational aspects of the club. Cost-cutting has replaced indulgence.

Where before the town’s starlets were developed with one thing and one thing only in mind - a long career in the Swindon first team - now the focus is on maximising potential sales.

Cooper knows the importance of youth, but he is phlegmatic about the circumstances in which clubs like Town find themselves.

“It’s important that we keep trying to unearth players that can come into our first team and be sold for a decent amount of money, that can keep the production line up and running. That’s how it is. I think going forward we’re going to have to produce more,” he told the Advertiser.

“I think there have been more pressing matters for Lee (Power, director of football operations) at the moment than the youth side. We’ve got a very good academy director, Jeremy Newton, he’s very thorough, administratively very good and he and Jamie (Pitman, youth team manager) and all the guys there are helping to produce some very good players.

“In the younger groups especially there are some very good players and it’s important now that we have this ethos running through it about how we’re trying to play.”

The situation is the same across the rest of the Football League. Cash-strapped clubs, denied a fair share of football’s absurd riches, have been forced to choose between youth and ambition.

Some long-term projects stand the test of time - Crewe, for instance, has retained category two status despite the necessary £250,000-plus injection of capital. Others, such as Yeovil and Wycombe, have abandoned ship altogether. Watford - for so many years the pillar of youth development thanks to their Harefield Academy - chose in 2012 to downgrade their facilities.

In announcing their decision to close their scholarship programme last year, Yeovil - fighting for promotion to the second tier of English football at the time - parked the blame on the EPPP.

A Glovers statement read: “YTFC have announced their decision to withdraw from the Football League’s Youth Development Scheme with effect from next season. The Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) has proven to be too prescriptive and extremely expensive and has seriously affected the Club’s ability to continue with a Youth Development programme.

“Uncertainties regarding the future solidarity payments offered by the Premier League, together with the lack of progress on the proposed ground development with the local authority have been additional factors in the decision process.

“It had been hoped that an under-18s scholarship programme would be more sustainable but the criteria the club is expected to meet is expensive, excessively bureaucratic and requires more resources than can be reasonably provided at this time. It is extremely disappointing to be in this position but this action has been taken in the interests of the club’s overall viability.”

‘Overall viability’ is a commodity that is hard to define. It takes root in the commercial side of a club, how much cash is generated through ticket sales, sponsorship, advertising and merchandise in any given season and how the club sees a youth section.

Is it an expensive luxury, a vital part of the community or a bit of both? And, when push comes to shove, can the club actually afford it?

Town are pushing ahead with their own project, albeit slowly. It’s understood a payment of several thousand pounds was delayed at the beginning of the season for unknown reasons, but Cooper claimed Power is backing youth development in Swindon.

“I think it’s very important, as we’ve mentioned in meetings with Jeremy, Lee and myself, for the community. It’s important, certainly for the time being, that we keep the academy going because it keeps that link to the community and it gives young boys that realistic opportunity to come through the system and play in the first team,” he said.

“It’s difficult for us because if we produce one at under 15 level then the compensation is not great.

“If we produce enough of them it makes enough of an amount that it makes it sustainable and I think, to be fair to Lee, he could easily say ‘no, we’d be better off going with a development group’ because we could easily lose our young players.

“But he’s kept that running and kept funding it so we do give these boys the chance to come through and we do run the risk of losing them for not a lot of money.”

Cooper has sympathy for those clubs who have chosen to close their academies’ doors.

“I think if you weigh it up against the costings you can half understand why they do it,” he said. “With the EPPP the big clubs can just come and pinch them, so full credit to our people for keeping on funding it and keeping it going.

“We get some funding but it certainly has to be funded by the club as well.”

Still, for now the Swindon boss will continue to support local youngsters. He regularly attends training at Greendown School on a Monday evening, takes sessions with Newton and Pitman and attends games where he can.

It’s a far cry from the Paolo Di Canio regime. The Italian sought absolute detachment from the youth team at Swindon. He banished the Town kids to dilapidated changing rooms at the far end of the Arkell’s Stand behind Bar 71, where tiling was falling off the walls and light switches were hanging out of their sockets.

A very public spat between Di Canio and former Town youth team boss Paul Bodin dragged the whole setup down with it. A source within the club has told the Adver that during his time in charge at the County Ground, Di Canio never watched a youth team training session.

Cooper has a different mindset, made evident by academy goalkeeping coach Steve Hale’s recent tweet after the Town manager attended an FA Youth Cup tie in Exeter.

“Great that Coops drove down to watch as well and speak in the dressing room,” wrote Hale. “Showing an interest unlike paolo last 2 seasons!”

Cooper has good reason to invest himself in the next batch of Swindon talent. At Birmingham, his own son Charlie is in the same position as Town’s scholars.

“I’d hate to think somebody wasn’t giving my son the time, care, love and attention he needed to improve as a young player,” said Cooper.

“We’re certainly going to do that with our young boys and try to produce some players for the future.”

While only two or three of the current second years are tipped to move into the pro ranks, at under 15 level Swindon are strong.

“There are one or two others we think may have a chance in that second-year group,” said Cooper. “In the first-year group there’s a nucleus of players we think have got a chance and even more so in the under 15s. That’s a really strong group.”

And so, despite money being tight, Swindon’s production line isn’t about to break down just yet, it would seem.

“I think it’s always had a reputation for producing young players and from what I’ve seen, certainly with the younger groups, I think there’s some real talent there that’s got a realistic chance of coming through and - if we can keep them long enough - playing in the first team,” said Cooper.

Let’s hope he’s right.