What I want to see as long as we’re talking about U23s and lower division clubs, is for the biggest Premier League clubs to field teams in Leagues One, Two and the Conference National, similar to what is done in Germany. I think Jürgen has advocated for this before, when he was initially reluctant to loan players out.
This would be a massive upgrade to the competition level our best young players receive in the Premier League 2. It would avoid us having to loan players out to various smaller sides and hope that the players get match time (I know we include playing time requirements on these loans but just this month we have had to recall three or four young players from their loans for not playing enough).
In Germany there are I believe 12 clubs that choose to make the investment of fielding a 2nd team. There may be more but if so, they play beneath the fifth tier. Most of the 12 II teams are in the 4th division (regional leagues) and the highest they can go is the third tier (currently only Bayern Munich II are there). Absorbing that many new “teams” would require Conference National to split into two divisions (two of 18 teams each) the way level 6 does for Conference North and Conference South.
I’m not entirely sure how the transfer rules work between the parent club and the lower tier team. AS I understand it the U23 players can move up to the senior team if needed, but the senior players cannot move back and forth so freely. Of course the clubs could come up with whatever rules that suit them.
The biggest thing is that the players would stay at the club, still have the same training, facilities, medical and nutritional programs, etc.
I know some of the smaller provincial clubs would object to this just outright, but you probably would have the bigger clubs or the Premier League pay something to the other clubs for the privilege of competing against their first team professionals year-round. In Germany by the way, those II teams do not play in the national Cup (just saying).
To me, as long as we are talking about moving into the 21st century with scrapping Cup replays and having a winter break, etc., we should keep moving in that direction and really provide a proper competitive format for the players we are supposedly trying to develop.
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