Andre Villas-Boas...

[Commander]

Exactly what Jose said a few years ago. Does it work in Spain and Portugal? Yes. Would it work here? No. Lower league football is far too strong here. Games in the third tier in Spain often get a couple of hundred people watching. Some games in the third tier in England get 20,000 watching.

But you can understand why he thinks it, it works for them, why not fur us?

Take him to Hillsbrough for Sheffield Wednesday v Huddersfield or Charlton and he'd probably understand.

 

[pishhead]

Exactly what Jose said a few years ago. Does it work in Spain and Portugal? Yes. Would it work here? No. Lower league football is far too strong here. Games in the third tier in Spain often get a couple of hundred people watching. Some games in the third tier in England get 20,000 watching.

But you can understand why he thinks it, it works for them, why not fur us?

Take him to Hillsbrough for Sheffield Wednesday v Huddersfield or Charlton and he'd probably understand.

Let them start at the bottom of the pyramid, if they were to immediately come in at championship level it would be franchise fc all over again. Why is it always the foreign managers spouting this nonsense!

 

[Dirk Gently]

It's similar to EPPP. The PL clubs want to get a bigger slice of the youth development pool all for themselves.

Why not leave things alone and allow all the Tier 2 clubs to get on with youth development? There are some superb clubs doing youth development outside the PL - and good enough players find their way to PL clubs and to England, the only difference is that the PL clubs then have to pay for them.

AVB's scheme would actually reduce the total youth development pool in English football.

 

[Commander]

Why is it always the foreign managers spouting this nonsense!

I cant be sure, but I would hazard a wild guess that it is because this is the system they have in the countries they come from.

What would your explanation be?

 

[SK1NT]

I wouldn't be suprised to see a Chelsea side in the Championship within the next 10 years, but not in the way AVB intends.

i wish

 

[pishhead]

I cant be sure, but I would hazard a wild guess that it is because this is the system they have in the countries they come from.

What would your explanation be?

Well of course that is why but if they had the faintest clue about our football heritage they would realise that unlike other countries football and passion does exist outside of the top league, a concept that seems to be lost on the majority of overseas managers.

 

[kano]

If you really care about our national team how about doing the exact opposite AVB? Pass some rules to force young english players into the first team of whatever club signs them or move them on to somewhere they WILL play.

Limit the number of youngsters they can sign in total.(who are not playing for the first team)
Force clauses into their contracts that let them move on for a nominal fee if they dont get any first team football.

If you have so many players that you think you'd like to enter another team into the football league....PERHAPS YOU ARE HOARDING TOO MUCH TALENT RATHER THAN DEVELOPING IT?

 

[Wilka]

They were talking about this on talksport this morning. Some Chelsea idiot came on saying football league crowds are on the declined (aren't they at an all time high?) and that a club like Barnet would love to play Chelsea B.... Surely a club like Barnet would face relegation if we add 4 or 5 B teams into the football league. This is almost as bad a suggestion as when the Bolton chairman asked for relegation to be scrapped from the Premiership.

 

[shaun_rc]

No no no no no no no no no.

This what they also do in Germany - but only from the third division down, and the numbers of "B" (or "II" as they have it) teams are rationed, so the third division can only have four for example.

In Germany it's actually moving in our direction, because lower league football is far better followed than it used to be, and fans are getting p*ssed off with ridiculous anomolies - 20,000 for a normal home fixture, then 500 when some "II" team is at home - or a game played with 300 home fans and 2,000 away in a cavernous empty Bundersliga stadium - e.g. Hamburger SV II.

Also the second teams sometimes out of the blue play a star who is coming back from an injury, so a third division team might play a Development Squad one week, then suddenly Liverpool II will have Stephen Gerrard, or Man Utd II would have Wayne Rooney. That's not fair on the other teams in the league, as the quality of these second teams can vary like that.

A terrible terrible idea.

 

[Biscuit]

Well lets face it, it's worked for Spain hasn't it. They're totally dominant.

 

[Wozza]

Well lets face it, it's worked for Spain hasn't it. They're totally dominant.

Two teams are, yes.

 

[CHAPPERS]

Guardian Sport Network | Championship B teams? Villas-Boas's idea devalues the Football League | Sport | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian has reported, with full quotes direct from the impressively coiffeured horse's mouth, that the Chelsea manager, André Villas-Boas, believes that Premier League clubs should have B teams in the Championship – the latest in a series of stabs in the dark from those towards the top of the game.

The thought process from this procession of geniuses appears to be a neverending: "Well, Barcelona and Spain are bloody good aren't they? What do they do?"

Of course, Villas-Boas is unlikely to last much longer if Roman Abramovich's recent past is anything to go by. He won't win the Premier League this season and the entire cast of Animal Farm (no, not that one) will fly over the Thames if Chelsea win the Champions League this May. So should we care?

Thankfully, probably not. Even in today's world of bloated Premier League self-regard, surely English football has enough about it not to let this kind of thing move anywhere near reality. While the likes of Villas-Boas, Richard Scudamore and those who held Football League clubs to ransom over the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) may hide behind an excuse of making the English national team more competitive, we all know the real agenda here – "Let's do whatever we can to compete with Barcelona and Real Madrid".

Sadly for Villas-Boas, Chelsea and their ilk, there are millions of supporters of Football League clubs who couldn't give a stuff how well the Premier League's elite measure up to Spanish sides. Most of us have got enough on our plates worrying whether our own clubs will survive the financial climate, to which, incidentally, the richest clubs are obviously impervious to the point of stretching the gap even wider at the worst possible time.

Talent can still come through Premier League academies. Even if his own charge Daniel Sturridge, a Manchester City product, is not example enough, Villas-Boas could always glance over to north London and the progression of Jack Wilshere from bright young Arsenal kid to England regular.

What's next? Forcing all English nine-year-olds to have the same growth hormone deficiency treatment as Lionel Messi? Rewarding any Sergio Busquets-esque play-acting with a goal at youth level? Encouraging teenage footballers to go and pick mushrooms on their day off in the hope they turn into Xavi Hernández?

Although this is just one opinion, it is a growing trend and one that should be rebuffed by supporters of Football League clubs. As with EPPP, it smacks of the Premier League forcing the burden and the blame for its inability to compete with mainland Europe, and Barcelona in particular, on to Football League clubs.

In the Guardian's article, Stamford Bridge youngsters Ryan Bertrand, Patrick van Aanholt, Gaël Kakuta and Josh McEachran are named as examples of players who could flourish in a Chelsea B team participating at Championship level. Perhaps if there wasn't such short-termism in the desperate pursuit of success at the highest level, which applies particularly at (but not exclusively to) Chelsea, one or two of these promising youth prospects would have enjoyed more than a handful of games by now? Bertrand, Van Aanholt and Kakuta are all older than Wilshere.

None of the above even veers into the territory of the tradition and history of the Football League clubs that would be devalued by such a change in the structure of the English game. We may as well all pack up and have 16 NFL-style franchises throughout the country and consign everyone else to the playing fields on a Sunday morning. You know there are some who would advocate that too – and they would probably mumble something about the England team as well.

This is how English football works. You're stuck with it. Now go and spend your £50m on someone who can hit an aircraft hangar door with a musical instrument of his choice. Just leave the rest of us alone.