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Ollie Watkins transfer cash helps fund Exeter City training ground plans
Image source, Rex Features
- Author, Brent Pilnick
- Role, 大象传媒 Sport
Exeter City manager Matt Taylor says plans to improve training ground facilities will help attract more players to the League Two club.
Exeter's supporter's trust will vote on spending 拢2.2m on new buildings.
The club is using money from the sale of England striker Ollie Watkins to pay for some of the work.
"Once the standard of provisions goes up alongside what we do coaching-wise, then players will want to come to this football club," Taylor told 大象传媒 Sport.
Exeter received about 拢4m when Watkins moved to Aston Villa from Brentford in the summer of 2020 for 拢28m, and have since pocketed a further 拢450,000 in add-ons.
"We can only afford to do this off the back of the Ollie Watkins money and that contribution towards it," added Taylor.
"It's only right when someone who's an example of what we do at Exeter City Football Club, and there's no better example out there than Ollie Watkins, that that finance goes back into the academy and first team buildings."
Exeter hope to complete contracts for the work by the end of this month and have the new facilities ready by September 2022.
The plan would see the removal of buildings which were put up as temporary structures more than 30 years ago and their replacement with a two-storey structure that would include a new gym, video analysis room and canteen.
It will also allow the academy to leave portable cabins nearby and move into the same building.
"The pitches have had a lot of investment, but anyone who's been here knows that the buildings are just about still holding firm, but they won't do for too much longer," added Taylor.
"The training ground is where our first team and the academy group spend most of their time and while we have fantastic coaching and good pitches, we need to improve everything else that surrounds that.
"It means investing in buildings and space, a gymnasium, a canteen, video analysis, a kit room, all the things you'd expect a professional football club to have but we've not been able to quite have to the full extent for a long period of time."