Crewe to downgrade fabled Academy to Category Three
Written by
Simon Austin
April 8, 2026
Crewe Alexandra have announced that they will be downgrading their fabled Academy from Category Two to Category Three status from the start of next season.
Crewe’s Academy has been Category Two since the launch of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) in 2012. However, the club have been in League Two since relegation in 2021/22 and have said “increasing financial and operational demands” have led to the decision to go down to Category Three.
This will mean they no longer have to run an official Under-21s squad that competes in the Professional Development League, which is a requirement for Category Two clubs. Running a U21 squad had become “increasingly problematic”, the club said.
Chairman Charles Grant said Crewe would now aim to have the best Category Three Academy in the country.
“We’re not going vanilla Cat Three, we’re going to go Cat Three-plus,” he added. “We will have more staff than is regulated and I think that gives us the opportunity to be a stand-out Cat Three.
“We’ll still have a dome, we’ll still have a therapy pool. No Cat Threes have those kind of things. I want us to be the best Cat Three that we could possibly be.”
However, he admitted that there would now be redundancies at the Academy, with that process about to begin.
“It’s a stressful time at Reaseheath in that there’s a number of positions that are no longer required and there’s a number of positions that are going to change,” he said.
“When I spoke to them (the Academy staff) this morning, there were some concerned faces and quite rightly. It’s not a nice thing to have to do in that sense, but the long-term sustainability of our Academy is fundamental to this football club and the long-term sustainability of this football club is in large part down to the long-term sustainability of the Academy.
“There is a process that we will go through, a redundancy process that we need to go through individually with people who are in those positions that are possibly or definitely affected.”
Grant said the decision to downgrade had not only been made at Board level.
“The Board has signed it off, but the recommendation has come from the Academy people and me,” he said.
“When you look at the subtleties between Two and Three, it’s been a valid debate and one that I’ve led and the Board has been involved in, and the Technical Control Board at the Academy.”
Crewe have had an Academy in various guises for more than four decades, as a Centre of Excellence and FA Youth Academy and then an Academy under the EPPP system. David Platt, Rob Jones, Danny Murphy, Dean Ashton and Seth Johnson all came through the set-up and went on to play for England.
Dario Gradi was the driving force behind the club’s youth-focused strategy, in 24 years as Manager and then as Technical Director. However, Gradi was disgraced when the extent of sexual abuse of young players by former youth coach Barry Bennell, a convicted paedophile, was uncovered.
Gradi was subsequently stripped of his MBE and remains banned from football.
Reasons for going Category Three
In an interview with the club’s official website, Chairman Grant laid out the reasons for deciding to downgrade the club’s Academy.
He said there had been a constant debate internally about whether the club’s Academy should be Category Two or Three, but that doubts had crystalised in 2022.
“In 2022 – and this is where we’ve taken a couple of very serious looks – the extent of funding changed significantly,” he said. “We were a minor funder of the Academy and external funding was by far the majority.
“That is no longer the case, those costs have gone up.”
This was the year that Crewe were relegated to League Two and operating costs went up for their Academy in subsequent seasons, with rising energy bills and an increase in National Insurance and the Minimum Wage.
However, the central grant they received from the Premier League went up, from £743k in 2020/21 to £764k in 2021/22. For the last three seasons the grant has been £804k, with the club contributing just over £1m on top of this for Academy running costs this season.
Grant said another major reason for the downgrade was the requirement that Category Two Academies have a U21 side.
“One of the biggest factors is the U21s,” he said, “because at Cat Two and Cat One level you need a completely separate U21 squad and set-up and all the rest of it.
“As most of our supporters know, by the time you’re 21 at this football club, you’re probably in the first team. So a U21 squad has never been on our horizon.
“We are contractually committed under Cat Two to play a lot of games, a lot of traveling, a lot of overnight stays, all of which takes time away from those kids on grass.
“We won’t be undertaking a nationwide U21 fixture programme, which is has been very very difficult.”
There is also a backdrop of the Academy becoming less productive season on season. In 2016/17, the first season of TGG’s Academy Productivity Rankings, Crewe placed an astonishing ninth.
They again achieved this position in 2021/22, making them the only club from outside the Premier League in the top 10, as well as the only Category Two Academy in the top 15.
Academy Manager Aidan Callan, who has been with the club for 24 years, having started as a Football in the Community Coach in 2002, told TGG: “It’s recognition of the hard work that’s gone in, not just from the staff who are here now, but from the past as well.
“It is a real collective effort. There are some big clubs with much bigger budgets than ours who are spending a lot to try to do what we are doing.
“To be above some big Category Ones and Premier League clubs is something we have to aim to keep doing.”
However, there was a sharp decline in productivity after that. Crewe placed 25th in 2023/24 and 34th in 2024/25, the most recent season of the Rankings.
A big reason was that they were primarily producing players for Leagues One and Two, rather than the Premier League and Championship, and the Rankings are weighted according to the level graduates are playing at.
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