By The Mad Hatter
August 22 2004

Manchester United chief executive David Gill has decided to ditch Peter Kenyon's famous feeder club plan. United 'fan' Kenyon left Old Trafford to join Roman Abramovich's ever growing empire but now Gill wants to stop a number of links with clubs all over the world. Manchester United now have players from all over the world in their ranks, with the likes of Dong Fangzhou from China, Carlos Eduardo De Lourenco Castro from Brazil, Kenny Cooper & Jonathan Spector from the US to name just a few.

Before he left the club, the former Manchester United chief executive, Peter Kenyon wanted to develop this further, and surround United with a worldwide network of feeder clubs, establishing links with teams from Brazil to Scandinavia. However, Kenyon's successor, David Gill, has decided to ditch the project.

''It's slightly difficult to see all of the benefits coming out of them,'' he said. ''Royal Antwerp has been useful in terms of placing players, and we're looking to do something in South Africa, because it is an interesting market for players, but the benefit with some of the others is, in my opinion, questionable.''

Since joining Chelsea, Kenyon has overseen the signings of many new players to the club, including thwarting his previous club, of whom he was a 'life long fan', in the signing of Dutch winger Arjen Robben from PSV Eindhoven. Chelsea are a club who now possess unrivalled spending power in the transfer market, however Gill remains confident.

''What we've got to remember is,
a) Chelsea cant get all the players, and
b) We can go for players, like Alan Smith, who want to come to United.
Top players want to come to us because Sir Alex has such a good track record of looking after them.''

There may well be disagreement between United fans as to the wisdom of the decision. While those who are cynical about young foreign talent will not be overly worried, there are those who can certainly see the benefits of Kenyon's plan and vision, and will greet the decision with dismay.

Countries like Brazil undoubtedly hold a lot of talent, and it would surely be advantageous for Utd to set up links with clubs from countries such as these, so that they can capture future talent before the players move onto larger European clubs, and thus avoid getting embroiled in tricky transfer negotiations which eventually break down, like what happened with Ronaldinho & PSG in 2003.

Indeed, Gill's decision to drop the plan may well pave the way for Kenyon to successfully oversee a similar project at our rivals Chelsea, and embellish them instead with a worldwide network of feeder clubs, seeing future Ronaldinhos moving to Stamford Bridge.
Will it come back to haunt us?