Peter Yates can still remember watching a young Aaron Wan-Bissaka in action for the first time. Yates, the assistant principal of the Crystal Palace Academy at Oasis Academy Shirley Park, was overseeing a Year Nine PE class when a young boy he had not really registered before received the ball, turned and ran at his classmates.

“Within the space of about five yards Aaron had beaten two or three players, accelerated and smashed it into the top corner,” he recalls. “I rang Palace immediately and said: ‘You’ve got a player on your hands here’.”

After seven years, the partnership between the South London club and the Oasis Academy Shirley Park is coming to an end this summer. Yates says he is “unsure” why, given 40 boys from the school have gone on to sign apprentice forms for Palace, including Sean Scannell, who made 130 appearances for the club over five years. “I can’t believe any other school in the country has produced 40 boys for one football club in the last seven years,” he adds.

The academy will continue to develop players, he says, just not specifically for Palace.

If Wan-Bissaka - who first joined the club aged 11 - is the final gift the scheme bequeaths it may have been worth it for that one player alone.