Antwerp

M160RA

Is the feeder club agreement still in place for next season? I hear Antwerp are going to let Souleymane Mamam go, and so effectively we won't really have any non-EU players who will be farmed there.

Is there any news of us loaning any of our kids there? IMO, if we send them there we should do so for the entire season and not just for six months as we did with Jonny Evans. On the flip side, I think our best youngsters deserve to be playing in a league of a higher standard than the Belgian second division. It's a real shame they weren't able to clinch promotion.

Elliott

As far as I know neither club has given any indication that it's coming to an end. A lot of people seem to think it's happening though, but as far as I can tell this has been the most fruitful season of the link-up. Evans and Simpson came back to England as better players in January, and Campbell did very well also (I'll be postng an article from manutd.com about Frazier's Belgian adventure shortly). The one disappointment would've been Darron Gibson as I think Shawcross did fine, but I'm not too sure about that one. All in all not too shabby, at least not from United's POW

PS18

from what I've heard i wouldn't say Gibson was a disappointment. he did miss quite a few games through injury and struggled early on, but by all accounts he was Antwerp's best player during the playoffs.

we've let Mamam go but apparently Antwerp are still to decide whether they'll offer him a contract (seems unlikely). was reading on www.antwerpsupporter.be last night an interview with Andy Welsh where he said that the partnership would continue.

to be honest i think Jonny Evans and Danny Simpson WERE sent for the full season, they just developed so quickly that the club really had no choice but to bring them back in January, which seems fair enough. as for next season, i guess it'll depend on whether any offers come in from clubs in higher-level leagues, but i guess Kieran Lee and Michael Barnes are the obvious choices to go over there this season, maybe Craig Cathcart.

oskarutd

I saw on the official site that David Gray will be with them next season. Maman was always an Antwerp player, but signed after a tip from us.
If they need players in the same position as last year my tip would be: Gray, Cathcart, Lee/Hewson and Brandy.

M160RA

Does Antwerp have their own youth development program?

Fitzjames

I think it works as well or as badly as the players we send.
Presumably the arrangements with Shelbourne in Ireland and a DAnish or Norwegian club fell through.
Personally Shelbourne would be a better bet (culture language ability wise) as a Belgian SECOND division team. A Belgian first Division team would work much better. Antwerp really need to be there.

There seems a plan behind "loans".
Academy players who sign Pro seem to get a few months in Reserves before being loaned out...either to RA or a League 2 side.
Then they come back more Reserve games where they are re-evalued. Then a loan to the Championship (the likes of Stoke or Barnsley).
Presumably the likes of Simpson, Martin, Eckersley, R Jones, Gibson, Campbell Shawcross will be re-evalued in Reserves before joining a Championship side on loan or being released in January window.
As an old timer I tend to resent the way that the Reserve Team is so downgraded compared to say 1960s.
Back then only say 14 "first teamers" would not have played meaning that the Reserve team quality was pretty good.
Nowadays routinely around 20 "first teamers" are unavailable plus around (at most last season) another 10 "reserves". Quality and continuity suffers.
Yes we are pretty high up Reserve League..we even win it which we hadnt done for years prior to around 1993.
But we are now playing other downgraded reserve sides.

The Real Deal

Dong should go over there and not come back he will never make at United plus Kieran Richardson and a few others.

PS18

i'm not sure about Shelbourne being a better bet - a) Ireland has a summer league which is obviously out of kilter with ours, and b) one of the main positives of sending these kids to Belgium is seeing how they adapt to the different culture, both lifestyle and footballing. i agree we could really do with Antwerp getting back up into the top division, and i wonder how long the club will let the current situation continue before perhaps looking at ending the affiliation and linking up with a top division side, or looking at another country.

this isn't the club's fault though in fairness. the reserve team as recently as two seasons ago with Evans and Pique at the back, Campbell and Rossi upfront, Martin, Gibson etc was very very strong and they were playing against some decent sides as well (was looking at old team-sheets the other day and there are plenty of recognisable names - i.e. youngsters who have come through at Prem clubs - on the opposition sides). the problem lies with the Premier League's ridiculous decision last summer to halve the size of the two regional Premier Reserve League's to just ten teams - 18 league games plus a handful of MSC fixtures is pretty much pointless as far as player development goes, and the club are left with no choice now but to loan as many of the kids out as possible if they want them to stand a chance of developing.

Fitzjames

PS18
Youve made some good points there.
On the Shelbourne issue the standard is better than it was in League of Ireland and the Setanta Cup involves Irish League (Northern) teams and Lge of Ireland (southern) teams.
I think Setanta want an all-Ireland League and if the pay out enough money they will get it. I have also heard that a "pan Celtic" League is being planned, involving Irish, Welsh and Scottish(below Scot Prem level) teams.
Im not sure that the "exposing players to continental lifestyle" is so important. ...esp with RA below First Divn Level.
Excellent point about the scarcity of Reserve team fixtures. But for a season we entered the Pontins League as well and I think that was a reasonable experiment that we should have worked on to increase matches for the reserve squad of say 22 players.
Back in the old days....and again apologies for harping back to those days the A and B (the third and fourth teams) teams were not age restricted as far as I know. Certainly on odd occasions senior players returning from injury played in the A team.
At one stage briefly we had several senior goalkeepers......Stepney, Gregg, Pat Dunne, Gaskell & young pro Rimmer......and if you look at old programmes you can see one or other of those names in the A team.
No substitute keepers on bench in those days of course.

RedF7

PS18

re: the Pontins League - it worked at the time because we had such a large group of youngsters and while both the ***RL and the Pontins' teams were technically reserve teams, the latter was almost a 'reserve reserve' team (not always, but generally) with the cream of the crop playing in what was quite a competitive ***RL at the time. while re-entering the Pontins League would increase the number of matches, it wouldn't address the issue of quality - the Pontins League is pretty weak itself, and the 10 team ***RL(N) would still not be a patch on what it was two/three years ago, as every team now is loaning out it's brightest prospects.

reserve football's in a pretty sorry state in this country now in general. we'd struggle to play in both the ***RL and the Pontins' next season as things are as we don't really have enough players. you get the feeling that if it wasn't for first-teamers coming back from injury needing games, the club would seriously consider scrapping the reserve side (after shifting it to Northwich it wouldn't surprise me if games are being played at Carrington before long, maybe even behind close doors as it can barely be worth paying another team to use their facilities when so crowds are as poor as they are now). it's getting to the point where any decent kids moving up from the u18's are going to get loaned out straightaway, rather than what's happened previously where they've played for at least a season at reserve level. anyone left playing for the reserves can pretty much be written off as having no real chance of making it (Kieran Lee the only exception last season).

i've rambled there with no real purpose, just saddens me the way things have deteriorated in such a short space of time. couple of years ago we were watching a reserve team full of promise playing brilliant football and lifting nearly every trophy going, with decent crowds and a real buzz about what we were seeing. reserve games last season were by and large thoroughly miserable affairs with a mediocre side playing against similarly mediocre sides in front of a couple of hundred people and i'm sure i can't have been the only one stood there wondering why i'd bothered.

Fitzjames

PS18.....youre absolutely right on this.
Its got to the stage where the Reserve Team is almost the "third" team. I get the impression some are there literally to make up the numbers, neither good enough for First Team or Youth Team.
Pity cos Im a traditionalist.
When my pen friends sent me programmes back in 1960s, it was almost good to look at the Reserves and Juniors reports. It always seemed that the difference between a REAL United fan and a so-so fan was what we knew or cared about reserves.
It is a kind of "crossroads" now. Hopefully the answer lies in beefing up the profile rather than lowering it even further. In a way scrapping the womens team showed how the "money men" think. We are less of a Club now and totally a franchise.
A word of caution however.
When Keegan went to Newcastle he scrapped the reserve team. Newcastle operated with a First Team and a Youth Team. Keegans successor (was it Gullit? theres been so many) first action was to restore it.

Too many changes in Reserve and Youth football down the years. Ideas floated (Mourinho) about entering teams in lower leagues continental style might be way to go, restriction on loans. PLReserve league too small at 10 each division to sustain full time Reserves. Youth teams tinkered at u19 u18 u17 u16....
its a fact that for all the money in the game, reserve football is the Cinderella.

PS18

yep, that's exactly the case. in a way i was surprised we released some of the guys we did this summer as i fully expected most of them to hang around to make up the numbers in the reserves. i keep hearing these days of teams signing players on loan specifically to make up the numbers in the reserve team - teams are keeping their reserve squads as minimal as possible and a few injuries or first team call-ups and you're looking at either bringing people in on loan or putting youngsters in too early, which is a dire situation either way really.

would really love to know the Premier League's rationale behind cutting the ***RL to 10 teams, just can't see any logic behind it. have always been a bit sceptical about the Benitez/Mourinho backed idea of having reserve sides in the lower league (no doubt it would benefit us but the lower leagues are massively different over here to in Spain etc and there'd understandbly be mass opposition to it) but it's increasingly looking like the only way of reviving the reserve setup.

Fitzjames

Cutting the Reserve League to 20 makes no sense. We have the situation where Aston Villa are transeferred from North to South. No continuity. although obviously the 7 Lancashire clubs and 3 North East Clubs naturally constitute 10 Northern clubs. But it means had Sheffield Utd stayed up and West Ham relegated... then presumably Sheffield would be re-designated South.
A lot more sense if the three relegated Premiership sides were entitled to field a team along with the Play off Runner up (that would make 24) and even the two semi finalists (26).
There would always be an aspect of reallocation of a midlands club or even two but best to preserve some element of continuity.
The powers that be reject feeder clubs but Reserve teams playing at Aldershot (Chelsea) Barnet (Arsenal) Chesterfield (Sheff Utd) etc and semi permenant laoan arrangements (Man Utd-Barnsley, Liverpool-Crewe, Everton-Sheff Wed) give the impression that there are already semi-official programmes.
Same way Academies are restricted as to geographical area they can recruit but get round it by having "arrangements"
Reserve and Youth Football in 2007....CHAOS.
And that has an effect on production of players and performance of young players internationally.
The game is too top heavy....MONEY

Wonder Pigeon

Shelbourne are in the Irish First Division, which is a drastic drop in standard from the Irish Premier, also we're semi-pro now and the fans (including me) would not be happy with being a feeder club.