In the premier Aston Villa life podcast one of the topics that came up was the role of reserve team football. Matt stated that few of the top clubs take it seriously and I am inclined to agree. All things being equal it’s nice to win reserve games, but results don’t tell the entire story.
The squads who play in these reserve games can vary wildly. Even Villa, who set out to win the reserve league, will send out almost an entirely different team week to week. A couple of years ago Villa’s reserves defeated Arsenal’s reserves 10-1. In that game Andreas Weimann, Chris Herd, Gary Gardner, and several other players in their late teens and early 20s mopped the floor with a bunch of kids who were 16 and 17 years old. When it is literally men against boys that result isn’t nearly as impressive as it may seem. That’s why the NextGen is a far better barometer of how the youth are progressing; it’s an apples-to-apples comparison.
In a way, winning all these reserve league titles may be a bit of a detriment. If the club’s homegrown players go out and beat overmatched or uninterested opposition they seldom face any adversity. It can’t be good for a player to experience adversity or failure for the first time in a league as unforgiving as the Premier League.
The club would do well to loan out the academy products more aggressively in the future. After Euro 2012, pundits were lamenting England’s lack of skill on the ball. Instead of only loaning players to the Championship the club should also look at loaning players abroad. A player will learn more technical skill in Holland, Spain, or Portugal than they will in the Football League, or worse, the SPL.
Reserve team football is really only good for keeping fringe players sharp and helping injured players regain fitness. Having a deeper squad this year should make it easier to send players on loan. Having a better squad will also dampen the calls to recall players after a few good games.
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