Premier League B Teams

It’s all bollox until they put a restriction on over seas players in the first xi of prem clubs the decline will continue

The number of over 16s playing football regularly fell from 2.2 million in June 2012 to 1.8 million in December 2013. As a result, earlier this year Sport England announced that it would invest £1.6 million in a pilot ‘City of Football’ to find new ways to get more people playing football regularly.

They can invest £18 million into such a scheme but unless you get these kids of the ass from a PC/gameboy/ipad and into some kind of sport and do some exercise the whole thing will collapse with in 30 or 40 years

Prosperity has meant kids have more choice with their social lives than they have ever had before.Unfortunately this means that less kids are playing football and part from organised football how often do you see a gang of kids playing football like you used to do?
No football think tank is going to change that simple fact but schools and amateur football clubs could play a part in getting some of that sort of thing going again.
When I was at junior school the teachers used to give you a pitch to play on at dinner time and a ball and basically you played football for half an hour -20 a side was normal and it was just fun but it sharpened you up.After school they would run football clubs just kick rounds where again you played for fun with an emphasis on teamwork and enjoyment and anyone could join in of any ability.
I also remember taking my son to Wigan Juniors FC at Pem high school on a Saturday morning back in the 1990s and it was just little teams having a good old kick round regardless of ability.
Some might laugh at this but the footballer Andy Griffin came through this football club and the big clubs like Liverpool and Everton flocked to this field on a Saturday morning to snap up players.

I think that between you and Vince you’ve hit the nail on the head. A few years ago my grandsons’ school cancelled a trip away because a Risk Assessment deemed it not safe in areas – what the hell is that supposed to mean. I understand the need to be safe and secure but this trip had been carried out numerous times over the years and then some berk with a self-righteous hat turns up and becomes a fully paid up member of the fun police.

Wigan Juniors of old was a solid place for the kids to go filled with enthusiastic volunteers – now what do we have, a society afraid to take kids out for a run, a past government who tried to ensure that our kids and grandkids were not mentally scarred for life by taking away competition in the school playing fields and a lost generation of parents who sue and claim the arse off anybody who scratches their little Herbert at school (whatever the event) – it’s no wonder we are where we are. My applause goes out to those lads and lasses who still get the kids running around, organising games and events and making playing outside in the mud and rain, fun again.

As you say Vince, no football think tank is going to change kids attitudes at present, but they could influence those with the money to start a campaign to get this money filtered right back to the real grass roots to provide facilities, people and most importantly equipment (including kit) – go on then, how many here have played in borrowed boots because you didn’t have any at the time.

Bring the football (and team sport in general) back into fashion at an early age and maybe, just maybe we could turn our sorry, hoody loving kids around.

Start with every player earning over £20K a week sponsoring a local school team(s) in their area (as part of good PR – they could write it off against tax (maybe)) – then lobby the leagues to release monies to areas across the country, a bit like lottery funding but specifically for grass roots football; and take it from there.

To jump into Premier League B Teams just keeps the money at the top and that defeats the whole object of creating ongoing generations of locally produced English talent nurtured from school to first international cap.