To "B" or not to "B"

[Dave]

A Football Association commission's plans for a B league could "wreck" the English football pyramid, says Premier League boss Richard Scudamore.

FA chairman Greg Dyke wants to improve opportunities for young English players by creating a new tier that would feature Premier League B teams.

Scudamore acknowledged the "challenge" of developing more English talent.

But he added: "I don't believe we should be wrecking the pyramid of English football to achieve that."

Huh. I'm confused.

Since when has Scudamore been on the side of right and sense?

[fbriai]

Huh. I'm confused.

Since when has Scudamore been on the side of right and sense?

It's quite an achievement by the FA. They've managed to make him sound like the voice of the ordinary fan. That's no mean feat.

[olaftab]

I note that a team in claret and blue has won the trophy in this related story in the Independent:
Dyke

[Big Dick Edwards]

The B-team idea is simply pandering to the top clubs at the expense of everybody else. If Dyke really wants to increase the amount of English players playing top level competitive football he should consider the following:

1) Don't allow clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal to fill their academies with young foreign talent. How is this helping produce players for our national side? Make these academies for British youngsters only.
 
2) Scrap the loan system. It's abused. The big clubs won't then be able to stockpile players knowing they can loan them out to get game time. At one point in January Chelsea had 24 players out on loan! Talent currently playing supporting roles at their parent clubs like Lukaku will instead be long term big players for other teams and make the Premier League more competitive.

[Dave]

1) Don't allow clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal to fill their academies with young foreign talent. How is this helping produce players for our national side? Make these academies for British youngsters only.

How do you plan on enforcing this? Why should Chelsea and Arsenal care much beyond whether or not they do well? Presumably we'll be signing up to this as well, so the likes of Drennan, Grealish and Weimann wouldn't be playing for us had it previously been the policy.

How about the likes of Clark who after representing England as a schoolboy decided to declare for Ireland? Kick him out?

How about players who move to England as children (say John Barnes), are they allowed into these 'English people only' academies? Actually, you said British only - why should the FA care about helping Scottish and Welsh talent progress?

[Big Dick Edwards]

That's the problem for the FA and/or Premier League to find a solution.

[Chris Jameson]

How about a 'B' team league, top four all qualify for the Champions League?

They could have their own FA Cup as well.

[Dave]

That's the problem for the FA and/or Premier League to find a solution.

Well, it's not something that they are going to want to do so they don't really need to find a solution at all.

[Big Dick Edwards]

That's the problem for the FA and/or Premier League to find a solution.

Well, it's not something that they are going to want to do so they don't really need to find a solution at all.

If their intention is for clubs to produce more players of the quality required to represent England, why would they not want to consider it?

[Dlp]

A Football Association commission's plans for a B league could "wreck" the English football pyramid, says Premier League boss Richard Scudamore.

FA chairman Greg Dyke wants to improve opportunities for young English players by creating a new tier that would feature Premier League B teams.

Scudamore acknowledged the "challenge" of developing more English talent.

But he added: "I don't believe we should be wrecking the pyramid of English football to achieve that."

Huh. I'm confused.

Since when has Scudamore been on the side of right and sense?

It's not the FA that run football in this country, it's the Premier League. The PL only care about the PL. They don't care about the number of foreign players, or the national team. As long as they can secure lucrative TV deals that's all they care about. Scudamore talks about "wrecking the pyramid" isn't that what the Premier League did when they started up and all the money started rolling in, mainly to them. At least in the old first division days there were half the teams in the division who could possibly win the league. Now there's two, possibly three. Apart from these the rest just make up the numbers.

[Ad@m]

To be fair, this commission was set up with the sole objective of developing an England team which can win the world cup.  With that in mind you can see how the suggestions make sense.

The bigger question is whether getting a World Cup winning England team is worth destroying the lower leagues of English football.  I'd like to think it's not and I'd hope that as a result these suggestions will be massively watered down before they get anywhere near implemented.

As for Scudamore, he's against anything that increases the power of the FA and the national team as that will inevitably reduce the power of the PL.

[Dave]

That's the problem for the FA and/or Premier League to find a solution.

Well, it's not something that they are going to want to do so they don't really need to find a solution at all.

If their intention is for clubs to produce more players of the quality required to represent England, why would they not want to consider it?

For all the reasons that I said.

And you're talking about two completely different things. As the chap below you says, the Premier League wants something completely different to the FA.