EFL Trophy Quarter Final

Looks like the semi final will be against Blackpool, Peterborough or Wycombe then.

 

Quarter Final attendances:
Blackpool 5,649
Peterborough 3,225
Bradford City 3,086
Wycombe 769

 

£250k seems a bit excess. It would add £4million to the prize pool. When you consider the FA Cup's total prize pool for every round is around £6mill it would be a crazy amount. And it potentially just 3 matches for their u21's, to make even half of that fee make sense there would need to be more games otherwise the amount of competitive games the players get to help them develop won't justify the amount. If we are talking about PL clubs putting that much in (or even more) then TBH scrapping the competition completely and basically folding the u21 teams into the league. Maybe something like

• PL Teams u23 teams will be spread between Championship, League 1, League 2 and maybe national league
• The U23 teams wouldn't show in the league table
• The matches between the League teams and the u23 teams would contribute to the league teams' points. Maybe make it 2 for a win, 1 for a draw though
• You would probably have it so each u23 only plays a league team once then it would only add 5 games a season more for each league team while giving the u21 20+ competitive matches a season but even if it was home and away that would only be 10 extra matches for the league clubs
• The u23 teams wouldn't play each other
• Their would be sub-leagues for the u23's which would decide when teams moved up or down the leagues they play in
• When a team gets relegated from the PL their team drops out of the u23's. Other teams would shift up to fill their space and the promoted teams u23 team goes into the National League

I feel that's the kind of thing that PL clubs would be happy to drop way more than £250k to make it financially worthwhile for the EFL and National league clubs if they could guarantee 20+ games. Having it carry league points for you would encourage the league teams to field a strong side rather than seeing it as a weekend off for the senior players which would defeat the very thing the PL Teams wanted from the EFL Trophy and that's some competitive games against seasoned pros but you wouldn't get a situation like in Spain where a B team can be Champions and take promotion places (except if their A team is in the division above)

I don't see the EFL agreeing to that and certainly, I suspect fans would start screaming 'its ruining our league' (I expect a fair few on here will even give me abuse for suggesting it) so something like that wouldn't go through even if it came with say another £130mill a year ontop of both the current solidarity payment, plus the additional proposed amount but the EPL clubs are largely crying out for more competitive football for their youngsters ever since the FA killed the old youth league setup and introduced the current one that's not fit for purpose as players don't develop basically just playing their own age group) and would almost certainly pay handsomely if it increased the chances of a few more of their youth players making it (just look at how many loans from PL clubs come with no fee and no wage contribution as long as certain conditions on amount of game time are met despite the fact they can be paying these players thousands and in some cases tens of thousands each week


On the u21 teams playing away. It has struck me as odd. When FA Youth Cup matches at Old Trafford and when Women's matches are hosted there it sees attendance be anywhere from 25k to 65k and you see big increase repeated when Youth teams and Women's teams play at the men's senior stadium across the board it would seem strange not to allow the PL team to host the matches as long as it worked on the same kind of basis of the FA Cup with a 50/50 split of attendance money (And maybe also have the PL team pick up the bill for both the EFL teams travel costs and maybe hotel costs for the night plus the cost of putting on travel for the fans so as many of the EFL clubs fans as possible could attend). It could put more money into the EFL teams pockets and give them the experience of playing at a stadium of the level they may not get the chance to play at (Unless they play Luton u21's when most of them play at better stadiums than that lol)

 

You would think I would have remembered they were at Wembley a couple of years ago seeing as it was against Man Utd. Infact were they not there a few years before that playing City?

You might be right Brighton perhaps wouldn't be the best of the u21's to guarantee a good attendance. Its obviously a non factor now seeing as they lost mind you

 

Brighton's u21's aren't as good on paper but I believe they are generally older and have had more exposure to the First team. With the likes of City and Liverpool they have deeper first team squads so youth players get less exposure to 1st team training and matches and the top teams largely have loaned the players around the age limit who are the best out and play. For example Man Utd u23 Squad of 16 players on the weekend had Two 20 year olds, Three 19 year Olds and One 37 year old (United do a thing where to aid development they bring in an old experienced player to be a coach and mentor to the players and often play in the u23 matches. Currently than Tom Huddlestone). The rest were 17 and 18 except for a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old but they should be playing U18 (or in the case of the 15 & 16-year-old shouldn't even be playing at u18 yet).

 

It would cost a lot but in general, being tenants costs more than just the rent. In general, most clubs have to pay for a certain amount of upkeep and only get a % of the revenue generated. It can depend on individual deals, some get it dirt-cheap, Man City pay around £3mill a year and the council paid for the initial conversion into a Football Stadium and they apparently get to keep almost all the revenue generated by the stadium including non-football events, compared to say West Ham who pay a little less but had to pay for the football conversion, pay a higher percentage of the the revenue the stadium generates and get non of the income for non-football events, I believe they even have to give it up in certain circumstances for other things if needed.

It costs alot to build your own stadium but it certainly has big advantages when you fully control everything about it and if you can use it effectively for non-football events such as concerts it can quickly pay for itself. Especially if you can use the land around well to bring in additional revenue streams, for example you might get a hotel chain onboard and they can stick a hotel on some of the land and pay the club for the privilege. Other stadiums have worked with retail stores or even full supermarkets or retail parks on some of the land etc etc