West Bromwich Albion chairman Jeremy Peace has attacked English football's new youth development scheme.

Albion are one of the Category One clubs in the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), but there is a free movement of players between Category One clubs, which leaves WBA vulnerable to losing their best youngsters.

Each Category One youngster has a set 'price' of £209,000 (not including add-ons for U-12 to U-16s, not including add-ons for eventual appearances) which Peace feels renders his own club's academy as a loss-making venture.

"I thought originally with Category One clubs that they can't poach from other category one clubs - but they can," Peace told the Birmingham Mail.

"So if that happens then it's £209,000 per player while we're running an overhead of £2.5million.

"On that basis we're running at a loss and if four or five of those go then what's the point? Why are we bothering?

"It's a big year for the EPPP. If it isn't proving successful then we will need to look at it.

"The way it is for us in the short term isn't working. And I'm not convinced it'll work medium term.

"The way it's structured these lads are going to go to the big clubs - that's the seduction.

"Why are we spending £2.5million to be another club's academy? We've invested in the infrastructure and we'll see what happens over the next year. But from what we're seeing so far it's very disappointing."