The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) is a youth development scheme initiated by the Premier League.
The intention of the EPPP is to improve the quality and quantity of home-grown players produced by top English clubs.
[4] The Premier League published the following list of principles upon which the EPPP was designed after its ratification by the members of the Football League:[5] The plan aims to improve youth development by focusing on the following:[5] The plan proposes the modernisation of talent identification and recruitment including research in such areas as physiological parameters, relative age effects, psychological profiling, motivation, decision making, technical ability and attrition rates.
Larger clubs were prevented from taking youth players away from home at a young age for training.
Category 1 academies will have high contact time with young players, require a minimum of 18 full-time staff and an operational budget of £2.5m.
[16] Hereford United, Wycombe Wanderers and Yeovil Town folded their academies at the start of the 2012–13 season, stating that the cost of implementing the EPPP was part of the reason for this.