By Tony Attwood
Arsenal are taking part in the Checkatrade Trophy with “Matchday 1” or “the first match as it is known in English” being in the week commencing Monday 3 September 2018.
After that there are occasional games played from time to time. The second set of games (known in modern parlance as “Matchday 2” is in the week starting 8 October. For the third round it is the week starting 12 November.
Two of the three games will played away, and one at home, as far as I can understand the regulations. Our side will be an under 21 team, with two exceptions. Those exceptions are a little unclear as the rules talk about players with over 40 games and over age players but I can’t yet see if that means either / or, or both or something else.
After those three games there is a round of 32 in the week commencing Monday 3 December 2018, a round of 16 commencing 7 January and so on to the Final on 31 March.
Another regulation I found says, “Players from EFL clubs who are out on loan in the National League and below are now eligible to feature in the competition, while invited teams have been restricted to fielding two players over the age of 21 and more than 40 first-team appearances.” So that sounds as if the over 21s must have made 40+ first team appearances. I wonder if someone could explain the point of that rule to me.
The “Invited” Clubs from the PL in the southern section are
1. Arsenal U21
2. Brighton & Hove Albion U21
3. Chelsea U21
4. Fulham U21
5. Southampton U21
6. Swansea City U21
7. Tottenham Hotspur U21
8. West Ham United U21
In the group stage games are settled by a bonus-point penalty shoot-out in the event of a draw after 90 minutes, before the 16 group winners advance to the knock-out stages.
Now everything up to this point says that we are entering an under 21 side but Arsenal.com put this out
Apparently Arsenal played a match behind closed doors today https://www.facebook.com/theafcpodcast/?hc_ref=ARSbGy1Y0QYcn4Y8N7Hu7564Lg4XgMsDKEhqaFPMB4f9yFQcvuudHzPlrDJR6P2bKpo&fref=nf&hc_location=group
Arsenal XI – Crawley XI: 9-0
Alexandre Lacazette x4
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang x4
Jeff Reine-Adelaide x1
Our forwards are already on fire it seems…
so would love our U23 to play together in Checkatrade / EFL and some of the less meaningful Europa Games. Playing together for Arsenal excites them and the crowd over future surely
Macey Bola Nkeith Jeff Ainesly Nelson Holding Lopez Smith etc fun
https://arsenalyouth.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/nketiah-scores-and-leno-debuts-as-arsenal-first-team-thrash-crawley-9-0/
Confusing reports about the Crawley match…
Jeorge Bird’s blog is mostly reliable so will believe him first 😉 Maybe the numbers I found at a facebook group was the assists? 😉
Surely, the rules are keeping up and comimg players in the teams, so the restriction is on players over 21 OR players 21 or under who have made 40+ starts for the first team ???