The controversial Checkatrade Trophy may be scrapped after only one season, according to the head of the English Football League.
Introduced this season as a replacement for the Football League Trophy, the Checkatrade allowed category A academy sides to enter a tournament previously reserved for clubs in League One or Two. Amid controversy over the changes and concern as to whether rules over selection were being bent, the cup has generated fan dissent and historically low attendances. Now the EFL chief executive, Shaun Harvey, admits its future is uncertain.
“We’ve always committed to review the competition and its objectives with our 48 League One and League Two clubs,” Harvey said on Thursday. “We said we would do this after the one-year pilot and it will take place in April.
“We will see if amendments need to be made to the rules for it to continue in this format, whether it can continue in this format, whether it continues at all.”
When asked if this meant the cup could be scrapped after a single season, Harvey said: “There’s as much potential that it won’t as it will.”
He went on to suggest that a reformed competition was the most likely outcome. He also claimed that in terms of its original goal of youth development, the Checkatrade Trophy has been a success. But he admitted there had been problems in the way in which the trophy was devised and implemented.
“When you look at the squads and the players who have been exposed to this competition now, they are predominantly from under-21 sides,” he said.
“Some of those young players are now going on to make senior first team appearances. They’re signing new contracts at the clubs. I don’t accept if you’re using [youth development] as a measure that it’s not been successful.”
The speed with which the competition had been set up hindered the competition’s effectiveness, according to Harvey. “One of the things that’s causing a challenge with the EFL clubs is a requirement for them to play what is defined as ‘full-strength sides,’” he said. “The reason for that is we can’t run a pilot to see if we can benefit younger players if they’re not actually being exposed to senior football. I think launching the Checkatrade Trophy as quickly as we did didn’t help the situation. We couldn’t be really clear about what we were trying to achieve. That didn’t help get this competition off on the right foot.”
Harvey was speaking at the launch of EFL Futures, another new initiative to help develop young, homegrown talent. A prize fund of £2.25m is to be distributed across Football League clubs over the next three seasons according to the number of appearances made by English players under the age of 21 (for Newport County and Cardiff, the players must be Welsh).
Funded from the EFL’s 1% youth development levy, the league hopes to nudge clubs into giving academy talent more first team opportunities. The scheme will also be supported by Sky, who will mark the names of young prospects with a red F when they appear on live broadcasts.
