Next season’s re-branded SPFL Reserve League will consist of just 16 fixtures.
The return of a Reserve League has been welcomed by many but the reality is that for a decade there has been no meaningful football underneath first team leveL.
Seventeen teams playing each other once is almost pointless.
Late in the 2008/09 season the old Rangers club announced that they would no longer be playing in the SPL Reserve League which gave other clubs the chance to indulge in some cost cutting.
Since then player development has been haphazard- at best.
All of a sudden a batch of players were denied the chance of a stepping stone into first team football. There was an u-19 league then first team football with Celtic trying to arrange friendly matches with Neil Lennon in charge of a Development Squad.
The u-19 league became an u-20 league and then was retitled as the Development League with five players over 20 year old able to be played. It was a reserve league in all but name.
Now that it is being called a Reserve League the amount of fixtures has been halved!
Across Europe virtually every country has an u-17 and u-19 league, in Scotland there is nothing above u-17 level.
Sixteen league games is virtually pointless, a match every fortnight on a Tuesday afternoon isn’t going to develop any players.
Finding the right loan move for a player is fraught with difficulties, there is no formula for successful development.
In the bad old days before the SPL and SPFL were created a Reserve League worked rather well.
At the start of the 92/93 season Celtic travelled to face Hibs at Easter Road in the first Reserve game of the season, making their debut for the hoops were Shay Given, Malky Mackay and Simon Donnelly.
All three had taken different routes to Celtic- all three went on to have very respectable careers- almost certainly more successful than all of the players who’ll be playing Reserve League football in August.
