The Football League, or as it is now called the English Football League (EFL), have held their Summer Conference (in Portugal) and confirmed that member clubs have agreed that for the 2016/17 season, 16 Category One Premier U21 sides will be welcomed into a new format for the EFL Trophy. The trophy will have a change of name as well - you'll likely recognise it as the Johnstone Paints' Trophy but their sponsorship has run out. please log in to view this image The plan is that the 16 elite academy sides will be evenly distributed throughout the groups with the 48 clubs from Leagues One and Two, and the whole competition running on a north/south basis until the final. Each team will play each other once in the group stage, with the academy team getting just one home game, and the top two sides will go on to the knockout stages. There wasn't consensus to the proposal among the League sides by any means and almost a third of them either voted against the idea or abstained. At a guess they saw this as the thin edge of the wedge towards introducing Premiership 'B' teams into the League. Full details and exactly who the 16 Academy teams will be, won't be announced for a couple of weeks. Currently there are 21 Cat 1 teams - Fulham being one of them - but you can bet your bottom dibs that the 14 Premiership teams will be a shoo-in so we will have to sweat it out for one of the last two. The present 21 are: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Norwich City, Reading, Southampton, Stoke City, Sunderland, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion, West Ham United and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Looks as though our U21 side may get an invite to enter this Cup (what was the Johnstones Paints' Trophy) after all. Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs have withdrawn their teams and Liverpool and Man United are likely to follow. Story: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...er-league-academy-teams-fans?CMP=share_btn_tw Availability of stadiums is cited as the reason by the 'big boys' for not taking up the invitation but I understand that Cup tie dates and International fixtures clashes is the real reason. So definitely a plan not very carefully thought through or involving consultation. To be honest I'm not sure this is good news for us. Five years ago, maybe even three, yes. However we've allowed such a age gap to form between our U18 and U21 sides that I just see us competing. On another thread I mentioned how few players we have at present in the U21 squad and virtually all of them only have one or two seasons at U18 level under their belts. We're at least two years away from building up a credible U21 side again. And I dread to think what it might do to the confidence of the current youngsters if they face a League 1 side.
Ah well, we didn't make the shortlist of Academy teams to compete for this Cup. As said above not too bothered. Here's a link from today, showing the teams who are included and the first round draw - http://www.efl.com/news/article/2016/efl-trophy-teams-and-draw-revealed-3209611.aspx
