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Colt team proposal


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3 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

What benefits?

Basically my following point re the difficulties of enough teams being able to support sufficient reserve teams to make competitive football at that level worthwhile.

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8 minutes ago, harry94 said:

 

 

I don't know if we can ever get to a system where this can be done in a way that people can live with but we do know that renaming the u20 league back to being a reserve league (and a couple of practically minor rule changes) hasn't dramatically changed the competitive element of second string football and unless we're going to rewrite the loan system to fundamentally change how part-time teams recruit (making Celtic B = Stenhousemuir), I'm not really sure where we go. Maybe another path is to require ringfenced funding for reserve football and some further incentives to compete more seriously but obviously now is not a good time for that either!

Why would any "diddy team" ( I can use that term 'cos Falkirk is a diddy team now) voluntarily surrender their identity to be any other teams "B" team? I'd far rather we languish in the lower leagues forever as Falkirk FC than be any other club's "B" team or feeder team in the hope of getting some of their colts or reserves.

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Why would any "diddy team" ( I can use that term 'cos Falkirk is a diddy team now) voluntarily surrender their identity to be any other teams "B" team? I'd far rather we languish in the lower leagues forever as Falkirk FC than be any other club's "B" team or feeder team in the hope of getting some of their colts or reserves.


It's mentalist but you just had the Stemhousemuir chairman come out and basically endorse that a couple of days ago.
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2 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

If it ever happened that B sides were allowed in to the leagues, they wouldn't be troubling the Championship.

We just had a series of democratic votes.

There's no chance a B team would reach the Championship. They'd most likely be fighting for avoiding finishing bottom of League 2 most seasons.

A system where 2 out of 42 clubs can block a proposal is anything but democratic.

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49 minutes ago, RiG said:
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So it is indeed a great pity that it will almost certainly be suffocated by the self interest of the perennial hangers-on who clog up the pyramid without ever contributing anything of substance to it.

Ironically, this sentence also applies to Keith and many other Scottish football "journalists" working for the big outlets.

 

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2 hours ago, Blue-Toon said:

 

In summary (t spare posters the pian of having to read this):

Rangers are genius visionaries. Scottish football's problems lie with Cowdenbeath playing Brechin four times a season. The Big House Must Stay Open."

 

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A couple of old Terrace articles on previous chats about Colt teams. Some of these points / questions remain pretty pertinent even now.

http://terracepodcast.net/colt-teams-proposal-the-latest-underwhelming-scottish-football-idea/

http://terracepodcast.net/18-questions-about-the-colt-teams-proposal-that-need-answered/

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There's the "Big Ugly Sisters" having a jobby, hope they clean it up......... oh no it's Keith from the Daily Ranger.......hail hail....... 

Have a serious discussion about Scottish Football and as all MEMBER clubs agree we go forward in season 21/22....end off

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2 hours ago, RiG said:

Some of my favourite parts...

Colt teams will correct the wrongs of the coronavirus?! :lol: 

If you believe this then adding in teams who literally cannot progress beyond a certain tier in the league will only exacerbate the problem? 

This can literally happen right now. No need to reduce the lower tiers of Scottish football to nothing more than a glorified reserve league.

There you go diddies, shut up and eat your cereal. Time for the top flight clubs to take over. The rest of you basically don't matter and your leagues will be turned into a reserve competition for the top tier teams.

Why do people seem to think that Colt teams playing against a bunch of lower league sides will suddenly turn them into world beaters? Colt teams are seen as some kind of silver bullet to fix all the problems that the national team has but I see now evidence for this. How about we bring our coaching standards up to scratch and improve facilities for kids to play football instead?

And the team(s) that get don't get promoted?

Possibly the cuntiest paragraphs in this piece of drivel. Do we ever hear the top teams in England bemoaning York City for any lack of success the national team experiences?

I had to stop reading after that before I threw my monitor out the window.
 

The c**t should be banned from 40 league grounds for that last snippet alone.

Utterly disgusting. 

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The likes of chelsea and man city etc have huge numbers of youth players but I dont see them crying out for colts teams in the leagues. I know they play in the checkatrade trophy but that seems to be it. It hasn't harmed England's attempts to bring through young players though so why do they think it will suddenly solve all our worst up here? Rangers just happen to have a shit youth system as far as I can see that has feck all to do with not having colts teams.

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2 hours ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

The c**t should be banned from 40 league grounds for that last snippet alone.

Utterly disgusting. 

As if that p***k would visit all but 2 stadiums anyway.

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33 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

That seems to be more in line with the other  idea  of having agreements with lower league clubs rather than a chelsea colts side or man city colts side etc.  He's saying that could happen to help finance clubs after covid 19. They seem to bring through enough decent players down south as it is these days so not sure its needed in that respect.

Edited by Shadwell Dog
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I posted my opinion about colt teams on here before, having experienced them in The Netherlands myself, but unfortunately this has come back again so here is my take on it again. In The Netherlands, the colt teams are very much hated by fans of lower division teams. They rarely take any fans to away games and at home games they don't get high attendances. In the first season attendances were half-decent but after that the novelty factor wore off and they fell. The record low attendance in the 2nd tier was at a game between FC Twente Colts and PSV Colts with an attendance of 72. That 72 included all comps, sponsors, journalists etc., so the number of paying fans in attendance was probably in single figures. The effectiveness of these teams is much debated as few players from those teams actually ended up in their club's first team. The really big talents tend to go straight in the first team or get loaned out to a top flight team. Plenty of clubs have pulled their colts team from the pyramid since it started, there are now only 10 left even though there are 34 full-time teams. Some big clubs like Feyenoord even never bothered with a colt team in the pyramid and their youth set up is very strong.

The Dutch youth system has a very good reputation but that's due to an extensive network of coaching, training, scouting and youth partnerships going all the way down to lower non-league. Big names like Robben and Van Nistelrooy came through the youth system of a small non-league club before eventually being picked up by professional clubs. Out of the extensive Dutch youth system, the "colt team" system is arguably the least effective and most controversial part. If Scottish football is really serious about youth development, improvements should start with coaching, training etc. Even considering colt teams should only be done once all those aspects have improved massively.

Just as a clarification: in the Dutch pyramid colt teams are only allowed for the 34 full-time clubs. They can't get higher than the 2nd tier or the tier below their first team if the first team aren't top flight. They can't get into cup tournaments with first teams. Colts of non-league clubs actually do join cup tournaments and are not in the league, which sometimes results in odd situations of a first team playing against their own colts. I once played in one of such games myself when I played football (I was in the first team), it was weird...

Edited by Marten
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6 hours ago, harry94 said:

In all honesty, I don't really think it would change the market dynamics that much. The OF have a large number of players in their reserves, it's really not as easy to sort out loans for all of them.

Loads of them are farmed out on loan at the moment and usually at significant subsidy to the loaning club. The point is that would dry-up if the Old Firm were able to give them regular competitive Saturday football without having to do so.

6 hours ago, harry94 said:

I guess you could argue it may be a tad more attractive for the prestige of playing for Celtic B or whatever to influence their pulling power but that's already near infinite already, as much as we get the 'gid young player learning his trade' talk whenever a player thrives elsewhere away from the OF, it's very rarely the case that they've actively picked a non OF club intentionally.

The difference, Harry, is that whereas maybe 5 or 6 youth prospects are kept full time at Celtic Park and Ibrox right now, with the rest playing for other clubs on a Saturday and training with the Bigots midweek for the Development League, a Colts team means that they will now keep more than 20 youngsters each: 5 or 6 for the first team then a 2nd XI with full subs for the Colts. Only they now won't loan them out at all because they're needed to play against Edinburgh City on a Saturday at 3pm.

Once you have a Colts team and the Old Firm aren't loaning their good youths out, that means being loaned out is evidence that you are a failure. Therefore players will do everything they can to stay in the Colts Team. And if they're then all being released at 23 instead of 19 or 20, that's several years of prime football development wasted.

6 hours ago, harry94 said:

You aren't increasing their income by anything that couldn't be considered a rounding error either so I also don't see that sparking a huge recruitment drive.

Nonsense. The wages the Old Firm pay their youth players totally dwarfs what the teams they're loaned to would pay for them. Sometimes by orders of magnitude.

6 hours ago, harry94 said:

Don't get me wrong, throwing this OF exclusive arrangement into the current small national set-up right now is lunacy and a really terrible idea at a terrible time which has been well covered but I think if we actually had a set-up that could support the full-time clubs fielding sides further down the set-up without completely destroying teams fixture calendars (i.e. a firm limit on no of colt teams v relative league size), there could be reasonable benefits reaped from it. In Spain, they have a third tier of 100 teams (as of next season) and well defined geographical territories. We've had this fragmentation with the juniors in this country which is finally eroding but as much as people scream the mantra 'too many teams in Scotland', we don't actually have that big of a national pyramid (Norway for example have 144 teams down to level 4).

Pish and nonsense. You cannot compare the football pyramid of a country 9 times the size of Scotland, where geographical subdivisions are viable, to one where that is not the case.

The only clubs for whom a fully-fledged Reserves or Colts team is financially viable are the Bigot Brothers and they are also the only clubs for whom it promises any meaningful benefit. Other provincial clubs can get all the benefits of a youth pathway either through boys clubs or through existing youth set-ups. They barely have the money to put up a fight in terms of putting a first team on the park: being expected or encouraged to sustain two will just dilute their position further.

6 hours ago, harry94 said:

I don't know if we can ever get to a system where this can be done in a way that people can live with but we do know that renaming the u20 league back to being a reserve league (and a couple of practically minor rule changes) hasn't dramatically changed the competitive element of second string football and unless we're going to rewrite the loan system to fundamentally change how part-time teams recruit (making Celtic B = Stenhousemuir), I'm not really sure where we go. Maybe another path is to require ringfenced funding for reserve football and some further incentives to compete more seriously but obviously now is not a good time for that either!

How about:

(a) requiring every club to register a maximum of 25 players for the league campaign

(b) requiring that no more than 20 of those can be over the age of 23

(c) impose a ban on any club signing more than 15 players between the ages of 16 and 22 on a full time contract

(d) make it a mandatory condition of every player registration that the contract includes a no-fault termination clause able to be exercised by the player if they are under 22 and have not played in a league game that season

Basically, force the Old Firm to recruit fewer young players and force clubs to play the young players that they sign.

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How about:
(a) requiring every club to register a maximum of 25 players for the league campaign
(b) requiring that no more than 20 of those can be over the age of 23
© impose a ban on any club signing more than 15 players between the ages of 16 and 22 on a full time contract
(d) make it a mandatory condition of every player registration that the contract includes a no-fault termination clause able to be exercised by the player if they are under 22 and have not played in a league game that season
Basically, force the Old Firm to recruit fewer young players and force clubs to play the young players that they sign.


I like your thinking. Out of interest, is there any example of this being tried and delivering benefits?
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On 07/06/2020 at 18:37, foreverarover said:
On 05/06/2020 at 21:55, GallowayBlue said:
On the face of it, £125k upfront sounds like a lot.
If it is split between the 16 other third tier clubs that would be around £7800. 
200 tickets at £15 a pop four times per season would be a further £12,000.
So clubs in the third tier stand to make around £20,000 extra in the first season. Less in subsequent seasons.
Will clubs be able to say no to that?
On a personal level, if my club supports it and it goes through they won’t see a penny of my money again.
 

I'm sorry but if that is anything short of bribery what is?

You are forgetting the other side of the coin. With these 'guaranteed' extra people, think of the rise in the cost of insurance, policing, stewarding. Will this alleged 'sweetener' cover all these extra costs?

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Loads of them are farmed out on loan at the moment and usually at significant subsidy to the loaning club. The point is that would dry-up if the Old Firm were able to give them regular competitive Saturday football without having to do so.

The difference, Harry, is that whereas maybe 5 or 6 youth prospects are kept full time at Celtic Park and Ibrox right now, with the rest playing for other clubs on a Saturday and training with the Bigots midweek for the Development League, a Colts team means that they will now keep more than 20 youngsters each: 5 or 6 for the first team then a 2nd XI with full subs for the Colts.




Just taking Rangers reserve squad in the most recent term and going through wikipedia quickly, it's compiled of 22 players who are in that bracket of being above that u17 level.

Of them, 8 spent some time on loan. Of these loans, a few were very short term.

At Celtic, they have 29 and about 10 who I could see had loan spells.

Both teams could clearly have retained a similar no of loans and fielded b teams with their numbers this term, I don't think it would have massively altered the dynamics (and re the point re loaning being a failure, this just isn't the case anywhere this is done - you're more promising players may still go a tier above).

The loans are a good route for teams to source cheap players receiving full time training but it is still a level of risk in terms of taking players on who are maybe a bit of an unknown quantity and may leave in the windows. As a result of that, you are easily looking at least 50 top flight players who simply will just not find suitable loans and then those numbers aren't sufficient enough to create a competitive reserve league. That's before considering that many of the loans are very short term rather than season long deals etc.

Regardless of what has driven it, there is a bit of a vacuum there.



Nonsense. The wages the Old Firm pay their youth players totally dwarfs what the teams they're loaned to would pay for them. Sometimes by orders of magnitude.



I was just talking here re this providing another financial stream to further monopolise their grip on youth, they aren't really extracting cash from this venture.



Pish and nonsense. You cannot compare the football pyramid of a country 9 times the size of Scotland, where geographical subdivisions are viable, to one where that is not the case.
The only clubs for whom a fully-fledged Reserves or Colts team is financially viable are the Bigot Brothers and they are also the only clubs for whom it promises any meaningful benefit. Other provincial clubs can get all the benefits of a youth pathway either through boys clubs or through existing youth set-ups. They barely have the money to put up a fight in terms of putting a first team on the park: being expected or encouraged to sustain two will just dilute their position further.




I don't think I explained my point well re the comparison piece. I was actually passing comment that our geography and make up of national set-up is unique and quite different from other set-ups so implementing the Colts concept is probably near impossible. I wasn't calling for any massive reorganisation (though it may eventually happen organically).

Re the point of extending this to other clubs, you have about 5 sides in the top flight who could field a squad of that sort of 18-21 year old bracket today who are not on long term loans. It would maybe be a push but I am pretty certain Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen would follow through and possibly a wildcard or two.


How about:
(a) requiring every club to register a maximum of 25 players for the league campaign
(b) requiring that no more than 20 of those can be over the age of 23
© impose a ban on any club signing more than 15 players between the ages of 16 and 22 on a full time contract
(d) make it a mandatory condition of every player registration that the contract includes a no-fault termination clause able to be exercised by the player if they are under 22 and have not played in a league game that season
Basically, force the Old Firm to recruit fewer young players and force clubs to play the young players that they sign.



I think those are potentially good steps, I like the squad limits. I half wonder as well if maybe actually imposing a limit on loans out per club (as Fifa are trying to force) might actually be helpful for the smaller full time sides as well in getting more development opportunities for their players.

Ideally, I'd just force the excess 18-21 type players into made up teams and play a competition that way but how you force clubs to loan them into that, I don't know.
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