Rejoining Central League benefits

Wasn't the central league part of the FA pushed reserve league setup though who in the attempt to help develop youth better restricted the number of overage players? If so then much like the PL reserve league it won't be fit for purpose.

Reserve league used to be a great asset for teams, matches would have a good mix of the best 18-21-year-olds and the senior pros who either due to being out of favour or due to injury who needed some minutes.

Now with the limit on senior players, there is a catch-22 situation. For the young players, they aren't challenged as much as they are coming up against mainly players of their age group that they have been playing against through the other levels and whom all have the same kind of level of experience and for senior players playing in these matches provides very little benefit fitness-wise.

So clubs are more likely if they need to get young players competitive minutes to send them out on loan. Which then actually means many of the players playing in the reserves/u23's are actually u18 players. That makes it even more of an issue so clubs don't even bother using the overage spots outside maybe the keeper.

It's a big reason why the PL clubs have become louder and louder about wanting B teams in the EFL so they can keep fringe and youth players in house with the right level of coaching/facilities, get the style the club wants to be drilled into them but can get really competitive matches they need.


When it comes to reserve teams I'm a massive fan of the Brentford approach which a number of the National League clubs also use and that's entering a reserve team in non-league. It allows clubs to take risks on players that they think may be useful but maybe aren't ready to be risked in the first team. Even those who don't reach your level can often be sold on for a bit of a profit and some may end up being first team ready or ready for even higher meaning massive profits can be had. And Tiers 8 and below have fairly lax registration rules that mean you could have a regular starter who gets injured and on their return, you could name them in the reserve team for a few matches and then still use them in the main team. It may be tier 8 and below BUT its generally better quality than the reserve league can provide

 

It's one of the really low local league (below tier 10) because their whole setup is really interesting. They don't enter any teams into any of the u23 or u18 leagues and their main B team isn't entered into any league at all. That B team simply plays friendlies, mainly behind closed doors. Let's say Arsenal have a spare week and want to try and get some confidence into some players and some fitness into others they can contact them at fairly short notice and have a match thrown together with the only rules being what the two teams decide. Their setup even allows them to be able to play multiple friendly matches on the same day. The non-league entry though ensures they have some matches always organised which is then mainly used for the younger players to get some competitive games to help their development but older players can be dropped in there if the don't have any friendlies setup.

All in all it gives them massive flexibility without the now over-regulated u23/u18 setups that rather than achieving what the new rules were supposed to do actually stifles development. Its that kind of outside the box thinking that all clubs should be looking at.