Greg Dyke,"B" Teams

Greg Dyke's dream alive with lower league clubs open to facing top B-teams

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Smaller continental sides enjoy the TV revenues that come with playing the B-teams of elite sides

IAN HERBERT

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Monday 02 March 2015

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Football Association chairman Greg Dyke’s idea of Premier League B-teams playing Football League sides remains alive because League One and Two clubs believe there may be financial benefits to competing against the future stars of Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea in the Johnstone’s Paints Trophy (JPT).

League One and Two clubs have asked the Football League to continue investigating allowing the elite teams into the JPT – an idea first muted because of Dyke’s England Commission recommendations on the future of the game.

Though support for the idea is not unanimous among the League clubs – AFC Wimbledon voted to scrap the concept at a meeting of 48 members of the two lower divisions two weeks ago – most believe that the financial benefits and logistics are worth investigating.

In the long term, an invitation to participate in the JPT could conceivably help overcome the trenchant resistance among Football League clubs to the idea of B-teams playing in the league pyramid by demonstrating the value of money-spinning games with bigger crowds and potentially larger TV revenue.

Smaller continental sides enjoy the TV revenues that come with playing the B-teams of elite sides. The possible attractions became immediately apparent yesterday as the Stoke Sentinel raised the mouth-watering prospect for Potteries fans of Port Vale playing Stoke’s B-team.

It remains to be seen how valuable Premier League clubs will view participation in the JPT, as it does not include Championship clubs.

But the main criticism of the Premier League Under-21 division is that it does not recreate the type of intense, pressured atmosphere which young players need to experience. Clubs such as Manchester City believe their young players need far more pressure than the U-21 league can provide. They have resorted to placing their best young stars on loan at European clubs, with senior academy staff visiting several times a month to monitor their progress.

For Dyke’s B-team idea to be resurrected in any form, there would have to be something in it for all parties and stadiums would certainly be fuller for the arrival of a Manchester United or Chelsea side than they would playing another lower league side.

The JPT has delivered occasional big crowds, such as the 31,054 who saw Coventry lose to Crewe Alexandra in the 2013 semi-final, but some of the early-round attendances are sparse.

Dyke and the FA would certainly welcome the idea of Football League clubs experimenting with playing B-teams, at a time when the enhanced £5.1bn Premier League TV deal makes the prospect of home-grown English players playing regular first-team football more remote than ever.

Such is the sense of resignation to the fact that England Under-21 manager Gareth Southgate will have limited regular Premier League starters, that Dave Reddin, the FA’s director of performance, wants to make the international team attractive as a shop window for the best young players to prove themselves.

“It wouldn’t be uncommon with our older-age teams to find a lot of players on loan from their clubs, so in that sense there could be an identity around England as being a shop-window for them,” Reddin told The Independent in December. “They are being loaned out here, there and everywhere because they can’t get into their clubs – but that’s a huge opportunity.”

The League One and Two clubs agreed by a show of hands to ask for the idea to be explored further. This emerged at a meeting of AFC Wimbledon’s Supporters’ Trust, The Dons Trust.

There are no plans on the agenda to make the Capital One Cup another environment in which the B-team concept can be tested.

 

Not sure who would agree to give way in the lower leagues to allow 'B' teams in. Looks like the whole structure of the game from League 1 down might have to change but 'B' teams would be good for the game IMO.