Despite Mount Pleasant Football Academy going trophyless over the last two seasons, Sporting Director Paul Christie says the owners are more satisfied than ever with the club’s current trajectory.

The financially strong St Ann-based club won the Jamaica Premier League (JPL) for the first time in 2023 but lost consecutive finals to Cavalier FC, including the penalty shootout defeat in May at the National Stadium. Mount Pleasant also failed to advance to the knockout stages of the Concacaf Caribbean Cup last season, finishing third in their group.

There was the feeling among many that the club, which topped the league table with a record 93 points, underachieved after investing heavily in their programme.

However, Christie told the Jamaica Observer that owner Peter Gould and the club’s hierarchy says last season’s achievements have them optimistic for the future.

“It was a season [in whch] we had in excess of 10 players under the age of 16 who made their first team debut. Four of them would have scored in the Premier League. We’d have had a record of clean sheets, goal scored, points and all of that,” said Christie.

“Yes, we didn’t actually get across the line as it was unfortunate that we’d have lost on penalties, but the overall view of the season is that for the first time we see actually… where there’s an amalgamation of the academy and the first team and that’s the whole point of this project.”

Since their promotion to the league in 2018, Mount Pleasant have been known for their heavy activity in the transfer market, luring some of the nation’s top talents with big sums to join the club.

The Observer has learnt that they’ve already been busy in the opening days of the summer window with the acquisition of Racing United star Ranaldo Biggs and Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz midfielder Demario Phillips from Montego Bay United.

However, Christie doesn’t expect any major squad overhaul due to the quality of the club’s youth players.

“For the first time since I’m at Mount Pleasant, it will be the least amount of incoming transfers and that’s a testimony to the work that is done at the academy,” he said.

“We have kids at the academy who are raising their hands, not just to get minutes but get bona fide minutes and make contributions, whether goalscoring, defensive or general play to the whole set up of the [team]. We’re satisfied that we’re on the right trajectory; however, we’re not in a place where we’re settling.”

Christie confirmed that Theodore Whitmore will continue in his role as head coach but hailed the impact of Assistant Coach Davion Ferguson, who also serves as the academy’s director of football.

“We understand the game model that we’re trying to build at Mount Pleasant. It’s easy because it’s one game model for the first team and the academy, so it’s a plug and play type of system we have up here where the academy kids would have been getting bona fide minutes,” he said.

“What we do is we sit with the technical staff, the director of football and have the discussion. [Ferguson] will point out the ones who he thinks are ready and we make the transition for them to come and play full-time training sessions with grown men and it’s working, so there’s a lot of good things happening at the academy as we speak.”

Mount Pleasant will kick off their campaign in the 2025 Concacaf Caribbean Cup next month and Christie is hopeful that they will improve on their debut showing last season.

“It’s no secret that we’d have been in a learning process last year. Sometimes you think that you know but you don’t know, so we’d have learnt a lot from the experience of the Caribbean Cup,” he said.

“Things are already put in place to ensure that we’ll give a good account of Brand Jamaica and the people of St Ann as well. We think we’re in a good place right now so we just need to continue to build on it,” Christie added.

Mount Pleasant have been drawn in Group A where they will meet 2023 champions Robinhood from Guyana, Trinidad’s Central FC, O&M FC from the Dominican Republic and the winner of the CFU Club Shield which will feature Arnett Gardens.