B Teams

Well Greg Dyke has put this plan into place to have B teams within the pyramid.
Bye bye English football, nice knowing ya

I don't understand this proposal at all. There may well be a problem with young English players not getting sufficient experience of high quality football. This must be the worst possible solution, however.

The issue seems to originate in PL teams stock-piling young talent, who, owing to the huge number of players ahead of them, have little opportunity to play and develop. This proposal won't address that fundamental issue - it will only make it worse. Surely a better solution would be to limit the number of players who can be registered with a club at each grade. Or to limit squad sizes so that some players have to be sent on loan.

That's before you even start to think about about the technical implementation of this plan:
Who will the 10 premier league sides allowed to have 'B teams' be? How will they be selected? What if more PL teams want to enter b teams into the league? What if one of the 10 teams are relegated from the premier league? Will the b sides be able to be promoted and relegated? Will the b teams play English players only?

Furthermore, I'd suggest that lack of opportunity is only part of English football's problem. Go back in time to when the majority of players were British - England still weren't internationally competitive. Why? Because we've never valued technical ability. Fundamental lack of ability is a far greater issue, I would suggest. There is no hint of addressing that in any of these plans. So far as I can see, it won't be English football that gains from this - only the big PL clubs, who will be able to increase and improve their own supply lines while denying players to other teams.

The FA have not really understood the problem with English football. The problem isn't that young English players aren't getting the opportunity to play. The problem is the young English players are not good enough to play. B teams won't help that. That comes from grassroots and youth development.

sportform wrote:The FA have not really understood the problem with English football. The problem isn't that young English players aren't getting the opportunity to play. The problem is the young English players are not good enough to play. B teams won't help that. That comes from grassroots and youth development.

  

If this idea was to come off then it will cripple a lot of lower league/non-league clubs. As there are more non-league clubs than league ones in this country it's about time people took more care over the foundations of the english game.

The Football League Chief Executive has said, unsurprisingly, that the idea for B teams isn't popular with Football League clubs.

Let's throw the idea in the bin, and never speak of it again - just like game thirty-nine.

Throw Greg Dyke in the bin as we'll.

This is getting thrown about and we have reports of grassroots football getting stupidly high funding cuts. The English FA are ruining the game.

AberdeenSteve wrote:This is getting thrown about and we have reports of grassroots football getting stupidly high funding cuts. The English FA are ruining the game.

Don't think it's fair to blame the FA for this. Most pitches are controlled by local councils, and since there funding from Central government has been reduced over the last few years they have to cut expenditure somehow. Unfortunately recreational activities are not seen as essential for a lot of councils, so it's an easy area to cut spending.

Nakatomi Plaza wrote:

AberdeenSteve wrote:This is getting thrown about and we have reports of grassroots football getting stupidly high funding cuts. The English FA are ruining the game.

Don't think it's fair to blame the FA for this. Most pitches are controlled by local councils, and since there funding from Central government has been reduced over the last few years they have to cut expenditure somehow. Unfortunately recreational activities are not seen as essential for a lot of councils, so it's an easy area to cut spending.

But surely the FA are in a position to subsidise these councils? After all these are the pitches where the next big thing will have to start out.

Happens here in Scotland, the SFA have heavily invested in some areas to keep the grassroots football at a good level so there are plenty of facilities for the younger generation to play their football on.

AberdeenSteve wrote:

Nakatomi Plaza wrote:

AberdeenSteve wrote:This is getting thrown about and we have reports of grassroots football getting stupidly high funding cuts. The English FA are ruining the game.

Don't think it's fair to blame the FA for this. Most pitches are controlled by local councils, and since there funding from Central government has been reduced over the last few years they have to cut expenditure somehow. Unfortunately recreational activities are not seen as essential for a lot of councils, so it's an easy area to cut spending.

But surely the FA are in a position to subsidise these councils? After all these are the pitches where the next big thing will have to start out.

Happens here in Scotland, the SFA have heavily invested in some areas to keep the grassroots football at a good level so there are plenty of facilities for the younger generation to play their football on.

The FA have put in £52 million over the last year into grass root football. I don't know exactly where the money's going (i.e could be on promotional campaigns, rather than facilities). Where I live there are plenty of 5 a side 3G pitches, far more when I was playing youth football.

Would it not just be easier to insist on more loaning out of youngsters from the top clubs to the lower league clubs.

I know we have a lot of our players at the likes of Rotherham etc.

Cant see why having B sides in the leagues.

If they're so bothered about young English talent coming through they need to look much harder on limiting the number of foreigners in the premier league teams.

Offer financial benefits for playing a certain number of home grown academy players etc....

It happened in the English Premiership in rugby when England was plagued with so many foreign journeymen and its working brilliantly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/28499047

Fear not, Greg Dyke has more idiotic ideas!

Man seems to be slightly bonkers