Brentford Sign Nathan Young-Coombes

[Danny]

Signed a 3-year deal with our B Team, touted as "highly rated" but we've all seen that before. @Rab any idea on him?

[Rab]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

Signed a 3-year deal with our B Team, touted as "highly rated" but we've all seen that before. @Rab any idea on him?

I was pretty impressed with what I seen from him in the few games I did see.

Thought for sure he'd be a first team player in a few years but apparently he was homesick.

[Devil]

How does he sign a 3 year deal with your B team? 

Does that not just mean he's contracted to Brentford fc? 

 

[Danny]

1 hour ago, Devil said:

How does he sign a 3 year deal with your B team? 

Does that not just mean he's contracted to Brentford fc? 

 

It means he will be playing for the B Team with a view to stepping up to the first team

[Devil]

2 minutes ago, Danny said:

It means he will be playing for the B Team with a view to stepping up to the first team

Most clubs in England don't have a B team, they have a first team and what is now known as the Under 21's.

I associate B teams with Spanish football where they serve as a feeder to the main team. 

I haven't used the term B team used in England. 

[Danny]

1 minute ago, Devil said:

Most clubs in England don't have a B team, they have a first team and what is now known as the Under 21's.

I associate B teams with Spanish football where they serve as a feeder to the main team. 

I haven't used the term B team used in England. 

Good thing we're not most clubs in England then otherwise we'd lack any sort of forward thinking and would still be drifting through the lower leagues. We dropped the academy a few years ago (though will probably have to form something as per Premier League rules now) and put all the resources into a B Team made up of 18-21 year olds who play their own set of fixtures against a variety of teams across Europe in a bid to make it into our first team.

[Devil]

Just now, Danny said:

Good thing we're not most clubs in England then otherwise we'd lack any sort of forward thinking and would still be drifting through the lower leagues. We dropped the academy a few years ago (though will probably have to form something as per Premier League rules now) and put all the resources into a B Team made up of 18-21 year olds who play their own set of fixtures against a variety of teams across Europe in a bid to make it into our first team.

Now that's what I was after, a decent explanation of what the actual B team was. I like the idea of that to be fair, my only reservation would whether these so called set of fixtures were competitive enough. 

Surely they'd be friendly fixtures.

[Danny]

7 minutes ago, Devil said:

Now that's what I was after, a decent explanation of what the actual B team was. I like the idea of that to be fair, my only reservation would whether these so called set of fixtures were competitive enough. 

Surely they'd be friendly fixtures.

In essence they are friendlies but they are much more competitive than an U21 league because of the variety, the schedule they follow is there to mimic the intensity of the first team's schedule. We play Premier League and SPL youth sides (Man Utd, City, Chelsea etc), prior to Covid we had fixtures against Bayern Munich, Bordeaux, Nice...we play lower league teams first teams during international breaks or as a side friendly, we've gone to Ireland playing the likes of Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk. There's a variety of skill level, all professional, the intensity of a normal calendar and more importantly they're playing against men in physical contests who wanna get one over on them. It works quite well and builds a bridge between an academy and first team squad that is lacking at a lot of clubs.

We had about 4-5 regular starters/subs in the first team from the B Team last season, culminating in one of them scoring the winner against Bournemouth in the play-off semi final and one getting an assist in the final.