Reserves

[billycopper]

What's the deal with the reserves? They've only scored 2 goals in a month, one of which won the mini-derby at the death.

They've won 8 games all season out of a possible 22. I think that might have included friendlies too! Blackburn, Wigan and City all put four goals past them.

I know the stats on the official website aren't up to date. They have had Coleman, Gosling, Nash, Senderos, Hibbert, Neill, Turner, Baxter, Wallace, Duffy, Vaughan and Yakubu making appearances for them from the senior squad.

Players like Baxter, Wallace, Duffy, Agard, Nsiala, Mustafi, Garbutt, Bidwell and Akpan are quite highly rated, so it's a little concerning that the team is performing so poorly.

I suppose that they're missing players like Jutkiewicz, Ruddy, Rodwell and Coleman. Even so, you'd expect them to be towards the top end of the table.

http://www.premierleague.com/page/BTLNLT

I can't imagine that Moyesie is that impressed with how the next generation are getting on.

Atleast the Academy side are fairing better.

http://www.premierleague.com/page/YouthCTable

 

[dave1001]

Have you been to watch them this season mate?

I go regulary to the home games, and you'd possibly see why. We just haven't seemed to have found any form this season. We seem to struggle getting into games and then get tired with the last 15 minutes of them.

Akpan is a very frustrating player. You can see he has ability but seems to lack confidence and seems to lose concentration during games. Still very young though so plenty of time to learn.

Bidwell aka Mick Bernarnd to me dad and his mate, seems like a decent defender but from past few performances Garbutt looks better.

 

[atrottel]

I think the last few weeks there has been a fixture pile-up with youth and reserve fixtures, plus some have been off on loans and try-outs. Doesn't matter with the Reserves, it's a nothing competition anyway, which I think some managers are trying to change? We tend to play a lot of older Academy/younger first team-squad in the team, rather than the old lags unless they are coming back from injury.

 

[Neiler]

Its how you use your reserves really either to develop youth or give fringe first team squaders not getting games, games - we use it for the young lads!

 

[chicoazul]

It probably didn't help with having half our reserve team having to play on on the bench for the first half of the season due to injuries. Did that affect them? I don't know, I'm guessing here.

 

[Andy M.]

Since I gobble up every morsel of information about the reserves and the academy I can get my grubby paws to, this is as good a thread as any to make my first post and hopefully get some more info. So, hi. Bear in mind that my impressions are second- and third-hand only, I only get to watch the games against the Man U reserves.

The impression that I get is that our midfield (usually consisting of Akpan/Peterlin as DM, Wallace in the Arteta role, Craig on the left and <random player> on the right) looks distinctly average. The back 4 tends to be the same both in the academy and reserve games and since the academy had the tremendous clean sheet run (over 1000 minutes without conceding a goal), I think that it just comes down to the age difference when they play in the reserves. Adam Davies in goal probably deserves a further look. In attack, Baxter has played ok (not set the world alight, but you're only as good as the team allows you to be and he gets very little support). Which brings me to my question - does anybody know where is Agard? AFAIK, he hasn't featured at all in 2010, there's been no word of a loan and nobody has mentioned a long term injury, which might be career threatening, judging by the time he's been out. I wouldn't shed a tear if he's released, though, I don't rate him at all.

Its how you use your reserves really either to develop youth or give fringe first team squaders not getting games, games - we use it for the young lads!

With very few exceptions, so does everybody else, it's not like our reserves face full internationals in every game they play (does happen once in a while, though)

Doesn't matter with the Reserves, it's a nothing competition anyway

This is pretty much true.

 

[chicoazul]

Since I gobble up every morsel of information about the reserves and the academy I can get my grubby paws to, this is as good a thread as any to make my first post and hopefully get some more info. So, hi. Bear in mind that my impressions are second- and third-hand only, I only get to watch the games against the Man U reserves.

The impression that I get is that our midfield (usually consisting of Akpan/Peterlin as DM, Wallace in the Arteta role, Craig on the left and <random player> on the right) looks distinctly average. The back 4 tends to be the same both in the academy and reserve games and since the academy had the tremendous clean sheet run (over 1000 minutes without conceding a goal), I think that it just comes down to the age difference when they play in the reserves. Adam Davies in goal probably deserves a further look. In attack, Baxter has played ok (not set the world alight, but you're only as good as the team allows you to be and he gets very little support). Which brings me to my question - does anybody know where is Agard? AFAIK, he hasn't featured at all in 2010, there's been no word of a loan and nobody has mentioned a long term injury, which might be career threatening, judging by the time he's been out. I wouldn't shed a tear if he's released, though, I don't rate him at all.



With very few exceptions, so does everybody else, it's not like our reserves face full internationals in every game they play (does happen once in a while, though)



This is pretty much true.

Welcome, good opening post that mate.

 

[billycopper]

I haven't seen any games live myself, so I can only judge things on paper. I've seen opposition line ups and they have very few household names in them either, so it does seem like we're making direct comparisons.

One note that I will make is that it seems that we have quite a small team, if you take the likes of Wallace and Baxter as examples. Maybe we're being bullied and outmuscled by more physical teams? I'm sure that we've played Duffy upfront on a few occasions to give us a bit more physical presence.

I've done a bit of coaching for Everton at youth level and I know that they've recently made it a stict policy that academy players need to be a certain build, no matter how talented they are.