Tell me, if a Premier League academy had denied you your Johnstone's Paint win in 2010, how would you feel?
For me I would have thought that we had a **** team if beaten by an academy- no way would that team have been beaten by any U23 team even with 3 overage players. Pompey on the other hand, our u18s need the practice so fancy your chances?
I'd be a bit gutted to be honest PL, but then we didn't vote to allow prem under 23s to join the competition so it's irrelevant really. Democracy is a wonderful thing, until you don't like the results
You could have easily declined the invite like Man U and Arsenal (even if they declined it not for the right reasons). I'm sure Southampton would have been completely against it 6 years ago, but hey, you're in the Premier League now so who cares about League 1 or 2? Yes, but in a 90 minute game of football, the result can usually go either way and the stronger side on paper might still get knocked out.
We could have did the decent thing and pulled out like some of the other premier league academies. Win and you piss off the div 1 club. Lose and you look like a team of no hopers. Either way you don't look good.
Its a good competition for our youngsters, they need the games so I believe we were right to sign up for this. Plus I don't really care if it pisses off league 1 sides as I'm a Saints fan, not some altruist who worries about the rest of the football pyramid. Perhaps selfish, but I'm not going to lose any sleep about it.
Exactly. As soon as we got a bit bored of League One, we went and got promoted. I don't see why more teams don't do the same.
I thought it was a shame (and said so) when we were allowed in this competition this season, however the lower leagues voted for it as it is in their financial interests. Money is being provided by the PL clubs, so obviously most parties believe it to be a good idea. The Academies see it as advantageous to give their lads experience against motivated teams. I think it is an interesting experiment. I don't know why some PL teams aren't taking part, but I think we can guess it isn't out of altruism.
I think there are going to be some very low attendances for this competition. #BteamBoycott seems to be what the lower league fans are saying.
Keyboard warriors...most people will turn out to watch their team play in any competition. With the added curiosity of seeing how good are the academy teams. In general, I suppose most players will be quite young....can't really see the higher sides put out too many senior players (though they could in theory).
We'll see when the attendances come through. Hopefully there will be breakdowns of how many away fans because big teams might be taking virtually the whole attendance away to the smaller clubs.
