[Football] Why no longer a Reserve Teams league

A reference on another thread to BFG and possibly playing him in any meaningless final matches, set me thinking. He won't have played a competitive game for several months so his match sharpness will be in question.

There used to be the Football Combination for reserve players, I know the U23's includes some reserve players but we have a wealth of talent that only comes in to train. Surely playing real football is more stimulating and a better pathway for players returning from injury.

Unfortunately the old Football Combination League has been defunct for some years, and reserve team football generally has gone out of fashion. Many clubs now just rely on development squads to bring through their younger talent, and that's why so many younger players go out on loan to lower division clubs to get game time in senior football.

I suspect in terms of personnel a reserve team wouldn't look much different to our U23 team now, which often has several senior players in it.

Clubs used to have a much bigger playing staff back then too - wasn't so difficult to sustain when the maximum wage was £20 a week, and only the top first teamers would be getting that. Many clubs used to run a 3rd.XI - and sometimes even a 4th.XI - playing in their local county leagues. All the clubs in Hampshire (plus Reading) used to run teams in the Hampshire League, for example. I doubt there was as much emphasis back then on coaching and development though!

I suspect that the increase in the number of substitutes required for each match also had an effect. When I started to watch football there were no substitutes and Albion had a reserve team in the Football Combination and an "A" team in the Metropolitan League where hey played against West Ham United 'A' and Southwick first team among others.

ringmerseagulltoo said:

A reference on another thread to BFG and possibly playing him in any meaningless final matches, set me thinking. He won't have played a competitive game for several months so his match sharpness will be in question.

There used to be the Football Combination for reserve players, I know the U23's includes some reserve players but we have a wealth of talent that only comes in to train. Surely playing real football is more stimulating and a better pathway for players returning from injury.

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Reserve team football morphed into what is now U-23 football over a period of time. The Barclays Premier Reserve League was started in 1999 which saw the withdrawal of the reserve sides of a number of the top clubs from the Football Combination and the Central League. That marked the beginning of the end of the Football Combination, and by season 2011-12 Albion, playing in the regionalised Southern Section of the Combination, had 10 (yes, that's TEN) league matches that season. It had become useless as a competition and I think Gus Poyet even criticised it for no longer being fit for purpose.

In 2009-10 Spurs decided against entering a side in the Premier Reserve League and other teams followed suit as the idea of development sides started to take hold. In 2012-13 the Premier Reserve League was replaced by an U-21 competition, the Professional Development League, which Albion participated in at League 2 South level. Poyet had actually introduced the concept of the development squad at Albion for the 2010-11 season with Luke Williams being brought on board as coach in August 2010.

I don't really see how you could have an U-21 (or U-23) league AND a reserve team league. As you say, there is an option to field a limited number of overage players in each U-23 match and there are FA Cup and Carabao Cup matches.