CITY'S Academy will soon celebrate the production of £100m worth of talent at their Platt Lane headquarters.

The Blues hot-house remains the envy of most of the Premier League, even though the arrival of each new first team boss means gentle shifts in emphasis.

Five different managers have arrived over the past decade and, as they approach their amazing financial milestone, Jim Cassell, the man who at the nerve centre of the successful operation, is adjusting to the goalposts moving again.

The arrival of Mark Hughes and with him a coterie of staff and coaches means that plans drawn up at the end of last season with Sven-Goran Eriksson have naturally had to be put on hold.

Nevertheless, Cassell remains buoyant, optimistic and proud of the Academy's achievement over the past decade with a big percentage of Hughes' opening-day squad likely to be home grown players.

Having already raised and seen sold the likes of Shaun and Bradley Wright-Phillips, Lee Croft, Willo Flood, Paddy McCarthy and several others to the tune of around £35m, Cassell and company reckon there is more than £55m worth of talent currently in the first-team picture.

Value

And that doesn't include members of last season's FA Youth Cup-winning side who will hopefully graduate into senior players over the next 18 months.

Full England international Micah Richards and Under-21 starlets Michael Johnson and Nedum Onuoha, plus the Republic of Ireland's Stephen Ireland, could fetch as much as £50m if they were on the market - all four were in the side Hughes named for his first game in charge in the Faroe Islands on Thursday night.

And there is another group of Platt Lane alumni right behind them whose value to the club and its balance sheet is growing all the time.

Ten Championship clubs are chasing young striker Ched Evans who became a full Wales international at the end of last season and, when you add the Premier League-blooded Daniel Sturridge, Kelvin Etuhu, Sam Williamson and Shaleum Logan to that mix, then it is not hard to make a case for the £100m barrier already having been breached.

And with the likes of Vladimir Weiss, Ben Mee, Andrew Tutte and David Ball all awaiting their breakthrough after last season's success at Under-18 level then few clubs - possibly only Middlesbrough and West Ham - could boast at having received such value for money in recent years from their in-house production lines.

"It is pretty amazing when you stop to analyse things," reflected Cassell. "But my mantra and that of the hard-working coaches at the Academy has always been to produce players for the first team. We think we give pretty good value for money!

"But in this industry you are only as good as your last game and like everyone else at the club we must find ways of improving where we can and driving forward.

"It will be hard to replicate last season's great efforts - that was a special campaign on all fronts - but that it the standard that we have set and now we will have to try and live up to it. I suppose other clubs will judge themselves a little bit on how they do against us."

Cassell also quickly shrugged off suggestions that there might be friction looming between Carrington and Platt Lane after rumours circulated on several fans' internet sites.

Agenda

"That's news to me," he said. "Of course things change when you get a new manager and chief executive.

"Things that had been agreed with Sven and Alistair Mackintosh might not be on the agenda of Mark Hughes and Paul Aldridge. That is natural. In any walk of life when there are changes at management level different ideas and philosophies always come with them.

"But it is early days and though I have met Mark he has quite rightly been concentrating on the first team because it is their success that is the most important thing to the whole club and everyone working at it."

Former boss Eriksson had agreed to hand over the running of the reserves though matters at City are complicated slightly by the fact they have two second-string teams, one in the Pontins League and another in the Premier Reserve League.

Hughes has indicated that he has no desire to tinker with an Academy that has been so successful and that, if history is repeated, will provide him with a steady supply of young talent.

"The Academy is first class," noted the manager. "The quality of the players it has produced in recent years suggests there is very little wrong with what the operation is doing at the moment.

"I like to give youth its chance and I know that City fans, like to see `their own' coming through. Those players have a real empathy with the club."

He has, though, brought in Glyn Hodges from Blackburn as his second team boss and believes the former Barnsley manager is the right conduit to put the finishing touches to the youngsters coming through.

"I am delighted Glyn has joined us. He has a great pedigree, has been a manager himself and did a great job at Blackburn," Hughes added.

"He will be a good link for the guys coming from the Academy and them being well prepared enough to join the first team. He is great in that role.

"Glyn is a pro licence coach as all my senior coaching staff are. That is important because it means the players are getting the right quality of work. He will be a great asset for us.''

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