Major Premier League rule change could threaten Man City’s academy dominance next season

Manchester City are the club to beat at academy level in recent seasons – but a major change to the Premier League’s top academy division could threaten that.

The Premier League trophy has worn the blue and white ribbon for the past three years, as have two other Premier League trophies offered at academy level.

Manchester City have won five of the last six Premier League titles to dominate the domestic senior league, and their influence on English football extends to the Under-21 and Under-18 levels, where they won the Premier League 2 or less. 18 domestic Premier League titles over the past three years as well.

This ‘Triple’ – as chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak calls it – is testament to Man City’s approach to all levels of the game, with a healthy carousel of talent still flowing.

Through the school system. It provided first-team players such as Phil Foden, Rico Lewis and Cole Palmer, while the underachievers generated millions of pounds in transfer fees for the club.

Next season, however, Premier League clubs have voted in favor of a significant change to the Premier League 2 format, again jeopardizing City’s chances of retaining the title.

Currently, Premier League 2 is divided into two divisions and is a single league system. All teams play against each other at home and away, with the top team in the league at the end of the season taking the title.

Next season, however, the leagues will be merged with a more sophisticated ‘Swiss’ matchmaking system designed to present a new challenge to players.

The concept of promotion and relegation was previously thought to have diverted too much attention to player development, although it did provide young players with an exact replica of the divisions in which they would compete. fight for the rest of his career.

Shareholders voted in favor of the new model at their annual meeting last month, meaning it will go into effect next season, in a format similar to the controversial one that will be used.

For League champions from the 2024/25 season. Instead of the top division of 14 teams and the lower division of 11 teams, there will be a single league of 25 teams, with clubs divided into 5 groups of 5 teams. This will then play each club into its own group plus four or five teams from the other group.

After all these matches are over, a combined draw will determine the play-off positions, with the top 16 teams qualifying for a knockout. This means that City could theoretically top the table, but lose the play-offs to a 16th-placed team.

The rankings will be based on historical performance over the past three years in PL2, so with City having won the Premier League in those three seasons, it would be surprising to see them ranked lower than Group One.

City will once again feel confident winning the league, no matter how many games they play – but letting the season-end titles knock out could jeopardize their title defense hopes .

In the English Premier League for under-18s, titles are decided for the winners of the North and South divisions, before they face each other in a single final to determine national champions – a game that City have won over the past three seasons.

Speaking to MEN Sport ahead of this year’s domestic final against West Ham, Under-18s head coach Ben Wilkinson explained the dangers of a knockout match. He said: “In any tournament, the strongest team wins that tournament, coach [Pep Guardiola] used to say.Coming in first after 24, 38 matches shows that you are the best team.

I always think that in single-leg games you can win or lose depending on a lot of little details, like we saw at Arsenal [in the FA Youth Cup semi-final]. “But it goes back to a time when we were in a development environment, and while we were in this development, we wanted to take players to many of the highest pressure moments that you have to play.

From that perspective that gives us another really valuable learning experience to see where the boys are.”

So, on the one hand, combining tournament format with knockout combines the exposure City coaches seek when preparing their young players for the first team. On the other hand, as Wilkinson has suggested, with City pulling out of last season’s three cup competitions from Under-18s to Under-19s after losing a player to an expulsion, their appeal in the league has been reduced by profits. this beautiful.

All it would take is one bad game, or one bad decision in an early play-off game to end a season early under the new system, and depriving those players of the chance to defend their titles. The shortened league programme will also leave more games down to one-off knockouts, adding a different dimension to developing players.

Given City’s various struggles in the FA Youth Cup, EFL Trophy and UEFA Youth League in recent seasons, the other side of the argument is that more exposure to knockout games will help build experience that is needed to win those competitions in future.

City will approach every competition with the intention to win it, so the new Premier League 2 format will be no different. After perfecting the formula to win the old format, it’s now up to coaches and players to work out a way to adapt to the new one – even if it puts their title defence down to more chance than they would like.