Shake up of leagues.Subject: FA to consider a new competition for Premier and Championship B teams..   

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If ever there was a need to get out of this dogshit league then this story highlights it. The B team league could replace League 2 with all league 2 teams then dropping to the conference, I guess the conference leagues would then drop out of sight? They could also put the B team in between us and the conference. We would then face teams made up of Prem. B teamers coming up through the leagues and it would also affect the loan market massively.
I am in favour of our national starlets playing a competitive game week in, week out it works in Germany, the question is could badly run clubs like ours survive the shake up?

I actually broadly approve of these plans. We lose a great deal of young talent 16-21 due to them not being experienced enough for the 1st team and a lack of competitive action at their age level. The loan system is one option but ideally clubs would want their young players playing in the image of the 1st team and this is not guaranteed at loan clubs.

I find it strange that so few football clubs are run sustainably and yet we do not operate a regional system at L2 and Conference levels.

Argyle in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Would be a bit weird having a league game against Southampton Reserves

The FA ( mainly Greg Dyke) are to look at the idea of a new competition for the B sides of the Premier League and the Championship.

The two main ideas are to 1) sandwich the new league between League Two and the Conference and 2) merge League Two and the Conference, with the B sides included in a two league regional set up.

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a disaster for football maybe the final nail for clubs below the 2nd tier.

argyle v soton or even swansea reserves ? a complete joke and i have to say that would be me & football fininshed with.

I agree Elias, football is a sport first and foremost and should be treated as such rather than from the business angle. The FA aided and abetted by EUEUKIPFA have been trying to bin a league or two for years. This is to aid the business aspirations for the top flight rather than looking after football as a whole. I agree that we need to do something to aid our national team, maybe we could rate young players and clubs would have to play highly rated players or lose them to teams that would play them. Teams like ours, Brizzle Rovers and Luton could dissappear altogether is that a fair price to pay for a better national team? Let's not forget that many a young player starts off life in league 2.

He can cock RIGHT off with that idea  

If he wants to do something to improve competition and development for the England team then try cascading a whole heap more from the mega-riches of the premiership down the pyramid so clubs can develop young players themselves.

The premiership and it's reliance on foreign imports is what has caused the 'blockage' to exist, it stops young English talent from breaking through. So why does he think anything will change by doing that?, does he believe these teams will comprise anything different from those clubs first teams?

No, they'll be crammed full of foreign imported youth players too.

And if by miracle of miracle one of the pimply faced English kids shines over these 'Julio Jesus Goalio' sorts and scores a bagful playing the likes of us and Torquay, d'ya REALLY think Man City are going to give him a slot in the first team at the expense of their array of foreign strikers?

No. They'll STILL then get loaned out to clubs higher up the pyramid but short of the premiership, just as they do now.

Furthermore, no offence, but just WTF are they going to learn that'll assist them towards their intended target of international football playing the likes of Neil Trotman and Guy Branston?

Here's a thought for you Gregory me old son.......stop feeding the non-league and lower divisions crumbs from the top table and give them some meaningful financial assistance, ring-fenced for youth development if you must. If they're good enough they'll find their way through, with or without the assistance of academies. Dwight Gayle just de-railed Liverpool's title last night, he is a product of the conference South and natural progression through the pyramid via Peterborough. See also Bolasie and Puncheon for that matter.

Plus, we got 18,000+ for a meaningless fourth division dead rubber at the weekend. The football league has traditions, rivalries and a soul of it's own that would get ripped up completely if every other game was against a premiership nursery school X1. There'd be no travelling support to swell the coffers of lower league clubs and no interest generated whatsoever for home crowds to continually see no mark cauliflower eared and boxer's nosed journeymen trying to catch no mark spindly legged and stupid haircutted pre-pubescents just to kick lumps out of them.

As Jessie J would say, "it's all about the money, money, money....." and Greg, you know it.

PS Greg, I wonder if you'd be so interested in all this if Brentford were still in league 2 and hadn't just got into the Championship, I wonder if you might soon reconsider Premiership 2 and a pulling up of the drawbridge behind it too.

we got two threads on this now

Mine is on Zoo corner, much better debate on that thread.  
Merged by me in a rather ham fisted manner.

If they want a competition for Premier and Championship reserve teams let them have one, but what the feck have League 2 and Conference teams got to do with it.

Complete and utter nonsense.

A similar scheme operates in Spain where the B teams draw reasonable crowds and often have their own stadia to play in. The B team then operates just like any other self-contained side except that it has a ceiling and is not allowed to be promoted to the same division as the A team; if the A team gets relegated to the same division as the B team then the B team gets relegated too.

It's popular and widely accepted. In Spain, that is.

The crucial difference here is that Spain is a much larger country with a long-established regional structure in its lower echelons of which the B team thing is an integral part. It's how they do things there and it works for just about everybody.

It's not how we do things here though.

The PL clubs all resigned en bloc from the Football League when the PL was formed and the PL is officiated, nominally, by the FA and it's the FA that also administers the non-league structure so, from an FA point of view, there is a huge gap to be bridged.

But the effect of this on teams in the FL would be devastating. 20 or so PL B teams would displace 20 Altrinchams and their like who would never, in all likelihood, be able to figure in the FL again and ever more wealth and power would reside with ever fewer, less geographically diverse, English clubs.

A club like Argyle should, normally, be strong enough to cope with playing Swansea reserves, or whoever and it would be great to see us play teams featuring the freshest up-and-coming talent so on that level I think the idea is OK.

But let us not be fooled about this being about the development of young players to the benefit of the national side. That's the lie we were sold when the PL was formed and it has made not a jot of difference to the success of our national side. In fact for all the much touted success of the oft-proclaimed Greatest League In The World on the allegedly fundamental criterion used to justify its formation it has been an abject failure.

No. This is just about entrenching and ring-fencing more wealth, power and privilege in ever fewer places and on that basis should be rejected.

....and what would be next......Chelsea,Arsenal Man C & U,Liverpool...etc...having C teams .....the end of football for smaller clubs with hardly any good loanees being available.....and semi-pro football for the rest of us.

zyph wrote:

....and what would be next......Chelsea,Arsenal Man C & U,Liverpool...etc...having C teams .....the end of football for smaller clubs with hardly any good loanees being available.....and semi-pro football for the rest of us.

It doesn't work like that in Spain so I don't think it would here.

The players are all allocated either an A or B (or C) status and that is the team that they play for. They can't swap between the 2 (or 3).

So the A team needs to be strong enough either to win something or stay up which means they get the best 30 (?) players. That means the B team gets those ranked 31 and downwards in the pecking order. If they get another 30 that means you'd be down to the 61st best player they have for the C team and even at our most powerful clubs those players wouldn't necessarily walk all over Accrington every week.

Bollocks!! NO NO NO!!

The aim of the FA should be to get young lads staying with their hometown clubs, and to prevent them all flocking to the big sides. This only serves to encourage it, to give the top sides unlimited opportunity to blood a squad of 20 youngsters they have zero intention of giving real first team opportunities to.

It's a farce.

Most of the new England players served their apprenticeships the hard way.

Hart started at Shrewsbury, Baines started at Wigan, Lescott at Wolves, Jagielka at Sheffield United, Smalling in the non leagues, Phil Jones at Blackburn, Walker at Forest, Stones at Barnsley.

Lennon at Leeds, Young at Watford, Walcott/Oxlade Chamberlain/Lallana at Southampton.

Lambert at Bristol Rovers, Carroll at Newcastle, Rodriguez at Burnley.

These are all recent England internationals who have had permanent contracts with non Premier League, football league clubs. And look what good it has done them.

Compared with what players that have been brought through by the big clubs exactly? And haven't had to step foot out of the Premier League? Sturridge, Barkley, Sterling and Wilshere?

My advice to any top young player would be this. It doesn't matter a jot where you are playing football, all it matters is that you ARE playing football. There are countless Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea wonder kids that were the best in the country at 17, that never made a competitive appearance and were never heard of again. Connor Clifford was Chelsea youth team captain and barely scraped a contract at League Two when they spat him out aged 21. That is what a world class youth set up does for a young player.


Instead of remodelling the entire football league to suit the big clubs, tell them to piss off, and start acknowledging that talented young kids are better off starting in the lower leagues and working up. The FA should actively promote that as career advice. If Hourihane had still been at Sunderland,  he would still be as raw as the day he came here - it has taken 100+ appearances to learn, adjust, develop his game and mature. All the top coaches in the world cannot be a substitute for that.

The top clubs know it and want to have their cake and eat it - have youth teams of 30 highly rated youngsters and let them play without worrying about loans and progress reports. But we cannot devalue the football league for the real clubs of this country.

Bollocks to the Prem, keep football as it is, and keep those clubs having to pay £2.5m when they want a player our clubs choose to invest the time and faith to develop.

I'd agree with your conclusion SFD, it IS about money and it should indeed be rejected.

Two observations though. In Spain bullfighting is popular and widely accepted. Welching on a legally binding deal 300 years ago when they sold Gibraltar to us is also popular and widely accepted in Spain. Just because the Spanish think something is a good idea, doesn't mean we should follow. Your namesake back in the day was very clear on that  

Also "it'd be great to see Argyle v Swansea reserves" (et al). No it wouldn't.

As I mentioned earlier it'd be turgid. Those teams would be devoid of any characters on the pitch, devoid of any traditional rivalry or history, and devoid of any atmosphere. Who in Swansea (bar the few who watch reserve football now) will watch Swansea 'B' at home when Swansea 'A' will more often or not be playing at the same time, or on the same day at least? Who is going to bother to drive to Plymouth to watch Swansea 'B'. Consequently all the banter and atmosphere that comes from fans chanting 'to and fro' will go. You would never get the absolute gem of an atmosphere at Fratton Park in ANY 'B' team fixture, anywhere.

Then there's the football. Men v boys each week, no thanks. Where's the sense of achievement in beating a team of kids?, imagine how losing to a team of kids will feel?

If this happened clubs like us would become merely a succession of teams to fulfil what are effectively 'friendly' fixtures for the greater furtherance of the premier league, supposedly the national team (although that's bunkem and we all know it, good players would come through anyway). We'd be like teams of stooges provided for the Harlem Globetrotters.

I don't find that prospect in any way enticing. Limit foreign talent and give more of the TV share to lower division clubs. They can insist it's ring fenced for youth development, by all means, anything produced will be 'stolen' by the richer teams anyway and loaned out to league clubs. So one way or another they'll end up in the championship/EPL anyway.

This suggestion is complete and utter cock.

The B team wouldn't necessarily either be full of young players or full of English players. It'd be an ideal environment for somebody like Paul Wotton now to shepherd the B team's youngsters along.

As for away fans... In Spain you don't get much travelling support mostly because the distances are so great. What you do get is the fact that just about everybody has either Real or Barca as, at least, a second team and the locals (los plasticos?) flock out to see them. The same would happen here with Liverpool, Arsenal and so on but much less so with Swansea.

I was just thinking back to the Combination League days with the "it'd be great" comment. It was great to see well-known players get a run out for West Ham, or whoever, reserves just as it would have been great to have seen how Beckham, Giggs & co would have done when they were coming through at Man Utd (had they been playing Combination League football - or B Team - football).

Fair do's.

The chances of Argyle having a B team though (or any other club who happened to find themselves in the lower leagues if/when this abomination of an idea were brought in for that matter) would be ZERO. The further tipping of the uneven playing field this would create would be like playing uphill on a vertical cliff, any chance of progression would be ended.

meaning full progression ends for PAFC when the mini stand is built which you and other fools have supported.

Maybe there's legs to this.

I've had an image come to me of Argyle entering a B team but not an A team.

We're still shite.

Dead against this.

Prem teams, who already hoard young talent (from here and abroad) would be encouraged to hoard even more, rather than loaning them out to lower league clubs. Further encourages the sifting of talent away from smaller clubs.

Can't see the attendances being good. Are that many people going to come down to Plymouth to see West Ham B play at Home Park? Do we really want to watch Argyle play a load of kids from a prem team.

If the Prem teams get to dictate the terms, then you can see them being able to 'dip' into their B teams for the 'A Team' should a player show talent - making a mockery of the competitions that any B teams were playing in.

Best solution is for the Premiership to just have a separate 'B' league. Isn't this what they used to do, but it got shut down because (ironically) teams kept pulling out!

I think you'll find that I predicted something like this would happen but nobody listened. (Bloody hell!!! I'm beginning to sound like Tring!!!)

knecht wrote:

I think you'll find that I predicted something like this would happen but nobody listened. (Bloody hell!!! I'm beginning to sound like Tring!!!)

Keep taking the tablets.

No you become Tring when you believe that you were the only one to see it coming.   

I can see the merging of L2 and the conference into two regional leagues to accomodate the B teams as the favoured option. The sandwiching between L2 and the conference doesn't really make any sense. Anyway it's all academic as it's only a matter of time before the Prem and the Championship form their own little Prem 1 and Prem 2 with no relegation to and promotion from the FL. As we're forever doomed to be at best a struggling L2 side under brent we may as well get used to semi-pro football against brentford and bournemouth B teams.

BRENT OUT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Iggy wrote:

No you become Tring when you believe that you were the only one to see it coming.   

Still enjoying the ride Iggy ?

All I ever stated/predicted was what Holloway has since confirmed with regard a club with our history trying to mix it with the big boys in the Championship. Of course, I was also correct about Napoleon's methods and ambition, which have contributed to the seemingly endless failures, which still continue to this day. It's amazing how few visionaries there were speaking out on the farm , back when it mattered   
I do have to admit,that not even my good self thought it would get this bad.