'Too early to tell' - Evatt on relative success of Wanderers' B Team project

It is 12 months since Wanderers made the decision to launch a B Team to bridge the gap between their youth ranks and the seniors, and Ian Evatt admits the new venture has not been plain sailing.

The dissolution of a successful development squad system in 2019/20 which had produced players like Rob Holding, Zach Clough, Josh Vela, Ronan Darcy and Luca Connell had been a controversial move at the time – and one which was quickly reversed once Bolton’s owners and Evatt had left League Two behind.

A team was entered into the Central League last season- but suffered badly from a lack of resources, prompting one of two conclusions; either Wanderers could re-tick all the boxes and revive the Under-23s, or go the less travelled road and follow Huddersfield Town, Southampton and Brentford in establishing a specialised B Team, along with designated playing budgets and staff.

That team currently sits fifth in the league table having won three of its nine games in the competition thus far. The squad – assembled in double-quick time from a handful of trials and free agents – has remained relatively stable throughout the season but no player has yet progressed to play a single minute in League One.

“It is far too early to say whether it has been a success or not,” Ian Evatt told The Bolton News.

“When we decided to go down this route it limited the recruitment options because we literally had a month to six weeks to find virtually a whole new squad.

“They came from the length and breadth of the country and most of them were complete strangers to each other and Matt Craddock was new to the role as well.

“This season has very much been a learning curve. We have looked at what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and I think next season we will be in a much better place.”

Although no B Team player has yet pushed into the league squad, Conor Carty’s late equaliser in the Papa Johns Trophy group at Tranmere effectively earned his team a point – and one which eventually pushed them towards Wembley.

Ex-Norwich midfielder Nelson Khumbeni has recently featured on the bench for Bolton, and also came on as a late substitute in the Carabao Cup win against Salford City early in the season.

Evatt has also brought full-back Sam Inwood in to the first team group for a closer look, and the homegrown youngster has been included as 18th man in a couple of matchday squads.

“Nelson is one of the success stories, he has been impressive all season and I think he is only going to get better,” the manager explained.

“Young Sam (Inwood) has a really bright future and has only just turned 17. I’m very excited about working with him too. His attitude is absolutely first class.

“What you tend to find is that the kids who have that kind of approach to the game, not just training but in everything they do around the building and how they carry themselves, there is a direct correlation for me – if you are professional off the pitch then you also carry it on the pitch, and Sam is one good example of a young man who goes about his day-to-day work really impressively.”

For several B Team players, loan moves have been the way forward.

Carty recently moved to Ireland to play for St Patrick’s Athletic and Connor Stanley has been at Bamber Bridge in the Northern Premier.

Adam Senior is currently at Halifax Town in the National League, while Luke Hutchinson (Bamber Bridge), Matty Grivosti (Radcliffe), Arran Pettifer (Atherton Colls), Matthew Tweedley (Lancaster) and Max Conway (Buxton) have been able to get loan experience at the same time as training with the club.

Even though Evatt believes there is scope for improvement, he is pleased to see the club’s young players start to assemble a football CV under his watch.

“The most important thing for me, whether it is players who we sign and try to develop through our B Team or the ones who have progressed from our youth team into the B Team system, I have a duty to try and get them a career in football,” he said.

“Now that might not necessarily be with us, we hope it is, but really there is very little chance that they are all going to make the grade with us.

“What we can do is give them the right coaching and the right information to try and get them a career somewhere.”

Source

For years I've never seen the sense in having an academy, B Team, Under 23's, or whatever form they take.

I mean what is the point, all the kids who are any good get hoovered up into the academies of the big clubs by the time they are old enough to walk and by any chance we do manage to develop our own, they jump ship as soon as they can - Lucca Connell for instance (who Iles claims as being one of our big success in his article above)

Let's look at these big success shall we - Connell is at Port Vale, Clough (who I said at the time was too small to make it) was sold for silly money to Forest, where he never made it and has never made it at any other club since.  Vela is at Shrewsbury, Darcy at fourth division Swindon.

That means that since the time of Jason McAteer (who we got for a set of football nets - or something like that) we have had just one success in Rob Holding in something like 20 odd years of investing our money in youth player development.

(Well to be honest we managed two - Jimmy Phillips son Nat (at Liverpool) but us being Bolton didn't think he was worth signing to the first team and was released at the end of his last season as an apprentice (or whatever the term the kids) with us).

Financially we've just been throwing money down a massive black hole for the last two decades with nothing to show for it.

Even if you read Iles article, nothing has changed - non of them good enough to make the first team - they improve them by sending them to places like Bamber Bridge, Radcliffe, Atherton Colls, Buxton, etc - Christ when I was at my best, even I could have got trials with clubs at that level if I wanted to have my career in football rather than the public sector which I did.

Nobody makes it from the top tiers of non league anymore into the professional game (Jamie Vardy apart) and none will from the likes of Bamber Bridge and Atherton Colls.

As for our season the article states they've played just NINE matches - that's just one a month!

How do you develop players if you only play one competitive game each month?

I'm not being nasty but none of our B Team are going to make it here - even Evatt admits that at the bottom of the article!

Might as well save our money and add it to our transfer funds to buy players from others because that's exactly what we do now anyway because we simply don't grow our own - and never have done for years and years.

Good post Sluffy, back in the day you would have had a lot of replies to that. I agree with your sentiment, there is absolutely no point in having youth teams or B teams. It’s crazy thinking about just how few players have come through Bolton’s youth ranks over the past 25 years, even when Bolton were a PL team and could maybe attract decent youngsters and have the resources to fund it, still no one came through. 
I always remember in the late 90s reading that Bolton had some exciting youngsters like Snorason, Duong Thatch, Jeremy Bon, Lord Karanga, James Sinclair. Not one went on to have any sort of career. This B team Bolton currently have is a joke, if these guys were any good they would be in the first team squad, if they aren’t good enough to be in the first team squad of a league 1 team they must be pretty useless.

Mad Dog wrote:Good post Sluffy, back in the day you would have had a lot of replies to that. I agree with your sentiment, there is absolutely no point in having youth teams or B teams. It’s crazy thinking about just how few players have come through Bolton’s youth ranks over the past 25 years, even when Bolton were a PL team and could maybe attract decent youngsters and have the resources to fund it, still no one came through. 
I always remember in the late 90s reading that Bolton had some exciting youngsters like Snorason, Duong Thatch, Jeremy Bon, Lord Karanga, James Sinclair. Not one went on to have any sort of career. This B team Bolton currently have is a joke, if these guys were any good they would be in the first team squad, if they aren’t good enough to be in the first team squad of a league 1 team they must be pretty useless.

Thanks Mad Dog (aka Mich Upson, Michael Bolton and many others) you are right, back in the day there would have been quite a talk about this, but sadly those days are gone.

People now just seem to want to be politically polarised about everything these days, everything is black and white and your views depend on what party you support.

There's no interest in finding any middle ground and certainly no chance of ever admitting you were wrong and the others were right.

I know I'm getting away from reserves and B team footballers but what point I'm trying to make is there's no discussion about anything these days - you opinion is fixed by your politics.

For example the left wing view would go something like this...

It's essential to give the youngsters every chance and every resource available to better themselves, even if they never make a career for themselves at any grade other than sixth or seventh tier level of football.

The right wing one would go probably something like this...

What is the point of throwing good money after bad on self entitled young men who abuse their boss on social media (think Clough and Vela/ Dougie Freedman) who clearly have no respect or self discipline and can't appreciate they have to work in order to achieve - and not have everything handed to them on a plate in life...

or something along those lines!

Going back to what I'd said, it is clear by now that the B team is certainly not a bridge to the first team - there isn't even a decent competitive league for them to play in (9 matches in what, 8 months?).

Sounds to me if there ever was a plan behind this, then it certainly wasn't thought through - and let us not forget that the kids in our B team are similar age to Bradley, Trafford and Shoretire who are all on a vastly different level of skill and ability than ours ever will be.

Might as well save our money and use it to loan in the likes of Bradley, Traf, etc, because that's exactly what we are having to do now - as well of paying out for a zero productive B team squadas well!

Nice chatting to you again Mad Dog - you've always been one of my favourite characters over the years!!!