Chairman Steve Parish hopes the club’s new Academy can start producing players good enough to lead Crystal Palace into the top six.
Parish revealed plans for a £20m redevelopment of their current Academy base in Beckenham after he secured a 75-year lease last year.
If planning permission is granted by Bromley Council, the site will house new classrooms, lecture rooms and meeting spaces, plus a new medical treatment, rehabilitation and sports science facility.
While on the playing side, it will have a full-size DESSO main pitch with under-soil heating, a covered full-size 3G synthetic pitch and floodlit 3G pitch.
Parish hopes the improved facilities and upgrade to Category 1 status will lead to more young talent making it to the first team such as star man Wilfried Zaha.
“The biggest success for me is Wilfried Zaha because he has played 300-odd times for this football club,” he told reporters.
“What I love about Leicester is their mindset. If you pay us a lot of money for our players and we think we can do better with that money, we might do it.
“We are not here to create football players for elite clubs – we are here to try to win things. That is where I want to get to. I want to compete with these guys.
“I would like to see [Aaron] Wan-Bissaka and Wilfried and seven other academy players fighting it out for top six, top four. That is what I would like to see. It might be a delusional aspiration but I don’t understand the point of doing it otherwise.
“I didn’t come into football to make money trading players. That is not what I am here for. It is part of what we do but it doesn’t represent success for me.
“What has changed in the Premier League is that the Leicesters and Palaces don’t have to sell to survive. If we think we can do more with the money then we will.”