IT’S been a big few days for all of us involved with the club’s academy system as we’re all being interviewed and assessed to hopefully secure category four status.

It’s all part of the Elite Player Performance Plan youth development scheme put in place by the Premier League and accepted by the Football League a few years back.

The intention of the EPPP is to free up movement of younger players by establishing a hierarchy of academies in the English game and fixing the transfer fees between academies.

It’s important for us to progress as a club and for the future of the academy.

Finances are obviously pretty tight but we’re trying to become as professional as possible and we want to earn category three status within two to three years.

I’ve been heavily involved this week like everyone at the club but as I’m also part of the first team squad I have to pay tribute to Danny Elliott and Kevin Waterhouse who have worked flat out.

Hopefully it will all be worthwhile and it certainly helps when we have had so many young players impressing so far.

You’ll all have heard about Manchester United taking a look at 16-year-old defender Regan Poole and it was great to see him on the bench alongside me for the first team at Tranmere on Tuesday night.

I obviously wanted to get on but I would have been so happy for Regan if he’d got a few minutes.

It didn’t happen on Tuesday but it says a lot about the support we’re getting from the gaffer that Regan was in the squad and that he and Aaron Collins and Tom Owen-Evans have all been handed first team squad numbers.

It shows that young players will get a chance at Newport County and that is a great message to send out to everyone in football.

Good luck to Danny, Kevin and the boys at home to Plymouth at 11am this morning in the Football League Youth Alliance – I’ll be keeping up to date on the way to Shrewsbury.

It was a very good point at Tranmere as far as I’m concerned and I thought we fully deserved to keep our unbeaten run going.

We did make a slow start and had to rely on some great saves from Joe Day but we soon knuckled down and I thought we might have just edged it in the end.

Shrewsbury away this afternoon will be another tough test against another relegated side but I think the Shrews could be even tougher than Tranmere because they’ve been backed a bit more.

They also have a very good manager in Micky Mellon, who I thought was very unlucky to lose his job at Fleetwood, and I know assistant manager Mike Jackson well so I’m expecting a tough afternoon.

Hopefully we come home with something and keep this little run going so we can continue to climb the League Two table.

Another team that will be desperate to climb the table as quickly as possible is our neighbours Cardiff City in the Championship.

It’s clearly been another busy week in the capital and it’s always sad to see a manager lose his job but then I never understood why they got rid of Malky Mackay.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a great player at the top level but he’s unproven as a manager so it was always a risky appointment.

He was fighting a losing battle from the start and after relegation from the Premier League a lot of teams find the Championship a really tough division.

Newport’s own Tony Pulis would be great for Cardiff but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen and he will probably be holding out for a Premier League club anyway.

For now I’m delighted for Danny Gabbidon and Scott Young as they get a chance to take charge of the club at Derby today.

Danny is obviously from Cwmbran and I’ve played against him a fair few times and Scott, who was assistant manager here at County under Peter Beadle, is someone I know quite well too.

He’s studying for his coaching badges with me and he’s a massive Cardiff fan so it’s a dream come true for him so it will be a great moment when he leads the team out this afternoon. Good luck to Youngy and Gabbs.