'Thirteen or 14 years down the line from the beginning of the academy system it's right to have a review,' McClair said. Howard Wilkinson was then the FA's technical director.

'Howard Wilkinson was the original power,' McClair added. 'He had the FA behind him. They did a first-class job. They looked at the French system and what Howard envisaged was that there would be 10-12 elite academies throughout England. Right away that got diluted. There were about 40 who applied and 40 got the licence.

'Lilleshall worked in that it produced Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher, Alan Smith, Wes Brown and others, with the added value that it had some academic curriculum.

'Howard's vision was that you have Lilleshall regional - 8-12 of them. But you had 40. Other clubs had centres of excellence. You end up with everybody chasing the same boys.'

McClair's argument is that, rather than have the best 200 boys divided into eight academies, over 1,000 boys were spread across England.

'Had Danny Welbeck, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones, for example, been together in a working and educational environment since they were eight, then there's no doubt they'd be better than they are now,'

McClair said. Irvine agreed: 'The individuals develop the group and the group develop the individuals and the quality goes through the roof.'

Mediocrity does not provoke such spikes, and McClair said: 'That was Howard's vision. He had two things: to improve the quality of English coaching, and without doubt that has happened. We have more qualified coaches at all levels.

'The second part was "better quality of English player". I'm not sure if that has happened. It's been brilliant for the average player. But it's not been elite.

'You could say phase one has improved the average player - and the facilities. There's also a cultural change in that you can have a coaching career - it amazes me that nearly every time I'm interviewed I'm asked if I want to be a coach in the Premier League.

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