Gers B have embarked on a continental programme of fixtures this term, which have included clashes against Manchester City, AS Monaco and Manchester United, among others.
Speaking to RangersTV to reflect on the changes within the Academy in 2023 and his excitement at what lies ahead, Jacobs said: “We speak about finding the best sparring partners for our players and [the Best v Best programme] fits exactly in that; we’re now having the best sparring partners every game that we play, allowing us to bridge the gap towards our first-team.
“We’ve had some really exciting games: Monaco at Ibrox, Manchester City, OH Leuven’s first-team. Those three games have been massive for us in that player development environment, but also with the games coming.
“It’s also a programme that we keep improving; we want to be honest with ourselves and what the next steps are, but we’re in an exciting place.
“On top of that, we’re still developing players with the quality of training time, where we can go really in depth and work on their individual development.
“That combination between having the best possible games and the best possible sparring partners, mixed with the training time where we can go in depth, is exactly where we want to be.”
Jacobs was appointed as Academy Director back in June and has overseen the adoption of a range of innovation methods to continue the Academy’s advancement to the forefront of player development.
He added: “We want to have the best players in the best environment with the best people.
“We speak out three things in our Academy: we want to be really innovative, we want to do things with a lot of care, and we want to be really bespoke. If you do those three things, then you can speak about the most exciting learning environment.
“Innovation is something that we’re constantly pushing on each other at every level of the Academy.
“The RB Leipzig [exchange programme] comes from asking ourselves where we can possibly learn and add, and that was a really good experience in terms of having players in a different country, methodology, and language, training alongside peers of their age and stage. We’ll have another player exchange in February where we’ll take more high potential players to another club and league.
“We have a really innovative player grading model where we try to see what potential looks like.
“We want to be a data-driven modern academy that produces players.”