Earlier this summer changes were made to the Checkatrade trophy which saw academy teams from the Premier League invited to join the lower-league cup competition.
Arsenal were one of those teams, and today the draw for the Southern Group (there’s also a Northern Group) was made. The Gunners U21s find themselves in a group with Cheltenham Town, Coventry City, and Forest Green Rovers.
#CheckatradeTrophy: Southern Section ? pic.twitter.com/j1PqQoKWOB
— Checkatrade Trophy (@CheckatradeTrpy) July 18, 2018
All the games we play will be away from home, pitting our youngsters against established, experienced professionals in a reasonably pressurised environment.
Speaking last month, new academy manager Per Mertesacker spoke about the benefits to the young players at the club by taking part in this competition.
“We feel it’s important to provide our young players with a variety of experiences in their development and we certainly felt that by entering the Checkatrade Trophy, the players will face different challenges from strong club sides,” he said.
“With many of the players in this age group destined to go on loan soon in their careers, the experiences from this competition can act as a very good link between academy and first-team football.”
Full competition details can be found here.
The first fixtures take place in early September, and it’ll be very interesting to see how our lads fare.
It’s a shame we’ve been draw with sides from Gloucestershire and the midlands, might have been a couple nice away trips to cheer on the boys if closer. The lower league teams seem to be grouped by region, funny that Swansea ended up in the most London group with three London sides in west country heavy groups. Anyway, should be a good experience for the youngsters.
As the u21 teams all play away fixtures I think its fitting that they have to ‘travel’ to away games.
Also stevenage might be only 50 Miles from london but its closer to Luton than Luton is to MK I think.
I tried to send this via the Contacts page – isn’t this interesting news?
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/premier-league/wenger-staying-at-arsenal-so-long-perhaps-a-mistake/ar-AAAe1sW?ocid=ientp
Worth reading the entire transcript: https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/full-transcript-arsene-wengers-rtl-14916477
Loads of great insight there.but papers of course targeted the most juicy and inflammatory bit,which if you read the whole transcript sheds an entirely different light on that comment.