Dear WSC
Being a non-League fan, with a major Premiership side playing their reserve-team football at our stadium, I have long since believed reserves to be almost totally unnecessary at the top level (Nothing In Reserve, WSC 235). A Chelsea v Arsenal game in February 2004 stuck out in particular. The 4,500 crowd probably hoped for the odd household name among a foundation of emerging talent. The players that actually performed would have struggled to get into a non-League team (one of them has signed for my side, Aldershot, this season). The game lacked any quality at all and the players never showed anything that might suggest either José Mourinho or Arsène Wenger might have been presented with an unexpected selection headache. With Chelsea releasing more players this summer, most of whom never got close to the first team (Dean Furman, Joe Keenan, Dean Smith, Jack Watkins, James Younghusband, Lenny Pidgeley, Filipe Morasis and Danny Hollands) again it appears that their reserve team offers nothing for José – and why should it? They have limitless resources, so why should they take a risk with untried youth? The players that are rated are sent on loan to gain “valuable first-team experience” at other clubs. Other clubs also use the loan system heavily, at their reserve teams’ expense: Arsenal and Manchester United have sent five players on loan, Liverpool four, with several others released. Fulham and Everton have also both released many young and up-and-coming players. Bizarrely, other Premiership clubs take loan players at the expense of their reserves – look at Watford giving experience to Ben Foster, Charlton to Scott Carson, Everton to Tim Howard, Wigan to Chris Kirkland and that’s just keepers. Top-level reserve football doesn’t need the Premiership to kill it, the clubs are doing that quite well enough. The days of players being discovered in the reserves are long gone; top managers know what players they have in reserve and that’s why they are there.
Andrew Hailstone, via email
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