West Bromwich Albion chairman Jeremy Peace admits there's been frustration over their academy work.
Peace briefly considered binning it, so frustrated was he at losing players to bigger clubs for cheap prices, which was allowed under the Elite Player Performance Plan scheme.
He told the Express & Star: "Gross expense is £3m a year and we have a subsidy of £800,000. So it costs £2.2m net.
"Up until last season you've had Liverpool knocking on our door saying: 'We'd like Jerome Sinclair please, we'd like Yan Dhanda please.
"How much? £200,000? There you go'. We're training them up for somebody else to take them.
"We said: 'What can we do? Can we completely disband it?' That's too radical. We are regarded as the No 1 in the Midlands in terms of the academy."
