All of this is perfectly reasonable and, as usual, I find little in what you say to dispute.
Even so, I can't really be happy about how youth football has changed. Footballers, like everyone else, get old and retire, so there will always be a small space for youthful replacements. That used to come from the old fashioned youth teams, now it's from academies. Some might not quite make it at their mother club, but get a chance elsewhere and become pros. None of that has changed.
What has changed is that clubs are compelled to have expensive academies which need to justify themselves financially, FFP and it's successors somehow give extra credit for the sale of youth team products, and kids are subject to an unseemly scramble for their signatures. The better kids move around from club to club.
Of course, it's very important that players like Imray and maybe Rak Sakhi bring in money, but I feel like that's become an aim in itself. What happened to the kid from the local area who grew up at the club and fulfilled a childhood dream by playing in the team?
More to the point as far as Cardines is concerned, I feel that a loan out is far more likely to be an exercise in building value than part of a plan that ends up in him playing here. The regulations make the former more likely. Look at Gallagher at Chelsea. Tonnes of loans, gets in the team, is very wholehearted and, in times gone by, would have been an obvious choice for captain. Instead, he always had a target on his back because he was home grown. Far better to sell him for X amount than to make the same profit on a French or South American player, as it's 'pure' profit.
Perhaps the palace team will one day have a core made up of academy graduates. That's not the way the wind is blowing at the moment, though. All that investment and it just makes growing your own less likely.
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