The9

Spartak Moscow currently playing in the 3rd Qualifying Round of the Europa League, so it sure as hell wouldn't be footballing reasons...

Yeah, I knew all that lot, we're onto trying to work out if there's even any kind of attempt at geographical justification behind it. The "Saints in section 2 (east)" and "Skates in section 2 (west)" thing is a red herring... ...Looking at the seedings (by division, theoretically geographical). L1 South 1 (unofficially "west") Wimbledon, Bristol R, Coventry, Northampton, Oxford, Swindon South 2 ("east") Charlton, Gillingham, Millwall, MK Dons, Peterborough, Southend L2 South 1 ("west") Exeter, Newport, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Wycombe, Yeovil South 2 ("east") Barnet, Colchester, Crawley, Leyton Orient, Luton, Stevenage Can't really argue with the east/west split in L1 where the line runs between Northampton (W) and Milton Keynes (E), and between Wimbledon (W) and Charlton (E). The east/west split in L2 runs between Portsmouth (W) and Crawley (E), and up between Wycombe (W) and Barnet/Luton/Stevenage (E) - again geographical. Where it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, is the Academy split: South 1 ("west") Chelsea, Reading, Swansea, West Ham South 2 ("east") Brighton, Norwich, Saints, West Brom To justify this geographically, you have to draw a line along the M4 corridor from Swansea, take in Chelsea and Reading, and extend it right across London to include West Ham. In doing so, you have to ignore West Brom and Saints along the way, which are both more western than Chelsea or Reading or West Ham, and yet end up pooled with a team from East Anglia and one from Sussex. Using a pure geographical split the sections would be "South 1" Swansea, West Brom, Saints, Reading; and "South 2" Norwich, Brighton, Chelsea, West Ham. That would indeed lead to the matches Ian Baker mentioned, as listed above (obviously I haven't checked the northern section for Port Vale/Stoke). If anyone can think of any other justification, feel free - the only one I haven't considered that I think could be viable is that they made the groups based on Arsenal, Spurs, Man U, Man City and whoever else pulled out, which left an imbalance in the original seeding and they just plugged the replacements into their slots, but even then Saints are STILL more westerly than Spurs and Arsenal and would have been in a western group under pretty much any circumstances. So "avoiding rivals" seems like the main criterion. Which is a bit daft for a competition theoretically interested in increasing attendance (and which has nevertheless led to Newport v Swansea).

Thanks, as suspected my mate was talking utter balls.

Tbf that would have been most people's description of Kelvin Davis circa 2008 as well. Apart from the bit about being great 5 years ago (unless we said it now, rather than then).

Not to mention that we've sold more STs than they can fit in their ground.

Early days, but it'll be interesting to see what happens for West Ham's first ever game at the Olympic Stadium when they need to win by 2 if they don't win 1-0, and where the home advantage consists solely of the fans because it's the first competitive match at the ground so the players don't have any kind of familiarity with the location. When you consider that the fans are also much further from the pitch than they used to be at the Boleyn, it'll be very interesting to see if they can turn it around. Personally I'm torn between wanting them to get through to stuff up their Prem campaign too, and England only having two representatives so the draw is easier to understand.

They're sponsored by Betway, but presumably Slovenian laws don't allow for shirt sponsorship by betting companies.

A friend of mine is swearing blind that there was "something on twitter" "from the EFL" where they confirmed that Saints/Skates, Port Vale/Stoke and West Ham and Chelsea/Millwall were kept apart, if anyone could find that I'd be intrigued, because all I could find was something about Cambridge and Cheltenham being in the "north" section due to being in the 12 most northerly teams in their division.

Mine's been updating for the last 3 years, I think from Sky Sports. I also found a Europa League matchdays and draw dates Google Calendar (in German), but they've just ruined that by adding all the fixtures so tomorrow's itinerary now has about 40 EL 3rd Qualifying Round games in my calendar on my phone.

Thankfully the Wayback Machine has archived the Premier League Handbook (because they've taken everything old offline from their website with the rebrand), so I can confirm the rules only say "M.1. Before the commencement of each Season each Club shall allocate a different shirt number to each member of its first team squad." http://web.archive.org/web/20160505114929/http://www.premierleague.com/content/dam/premierleague/site-content/News/publications/handbooks/premier-league-handbook-2015-16.pdf (WARNING! PDF!) It used to be longer than that, but officially they don't have to do anything for weeks - but it makes sense so they don't lose out on shirt printing revenue that they get on with it... I'd be surprised if anything major happened, looks like Austin will take 10, Redmond will have 22 and we'll see what Hojbjerg gets, though he's been wearing 5 preseason that's (currently) Gardos'. 1, 12, 19 are also free at the moment.

Looking at the options for possible opponents, we were grouped in South East, the Skates South West - which sounds ridiculous but our seeding pot as an academy could be geographically very different from theirs as a poky bottom two leagues club. Unless of course one of Saints' criteria for accepting the invitation was a guarantee we wouldn't have to play that lot with our valuable youngsters. As far as the draw goes, I've been to all three already (ironically went to Crawley v Newport in the JPT 2 years ago when my friends and family made up 10% of the away following that day) and the wife is unlikely to go to Charlton midweek to get that one ticked off for her, so we'll probably only go to the home game(s?).

Ha, if you recall, I go into hiding either side of the draw to accumulate tabs of open windows in Wikipedia, Google Maps and hotel and flight sales websites ready to book stuff.

Yeah, forgot that for a moment when I was trying to find 3 places nearby... Anderlecht, Lille and Dundalk then. I'd also assumed Pot 4 for the original list for some reason, so this one's more sound as we're Pot 3 in this example. If you want to keep us with Pot 4, say Mainz instead.

No EFL Trophy love-in then... Saints (Academy) in with Charlton (who we played the season we won it), Colchester and Crawley; Skates with Reading Academy, Bristol Rovers and Yeovil. Newport didn't manage to get either of them, though are in with Swansea Academy which hopefully will happen before the transfer window closes so County can get a couple of loanees they like the look of. Hopefully Reading don't have any the Skates want...

Remember this Skate kit vote for the 2016/17 shirt: http://www.footyheadlines.com/2015/11/portsmouth-2016-17-kit-vote.html Yeah, they had three choices, A, B or C for home, away and third kit. Gloriously their kit choices were... "CAC":

Oh and not that the EFL are terrible at this or anything, but this article says "The EFL will announce all Category 1 Academy teams participating in next season’s EFL Trophy at 9.30am on Wednesday 27th June 2016." http://www.efl.com/news/article/2016/efl-trophy-group-stage-draw-date-announced-3207560.aspx Which is great and everything, but they mean Wednesday 27th July and didn't publish the article until today.

A quick n dirty list which might have one or two inaccuracies, but... available overage players (non-internationals for the last 2 group fixtures) from which we can select 5. 5 Romania DF Florin Gardoș (maybe) 9 England FW Jay Rodriguez 14 Spain MF Oriol Romeu 15 Curaçao DF Cuco Martina (maybe) 16 England MF James Ward-Prowse 18 England MF Harrison Reed 25 Argentina GK Paulo Gazzaniga 27 Wales MF Lloyd Isgrove 28 England FW Charlie Austin 33 England DF Matt Targett — England MF Nathan Redmond U23s 24 England DF Jack Stephens 29 England DF Bevis Mugabi 30 England DF Will Wood 31 England MF Armani Little 34 England MF Jake Flannigan 35 England DF Josh Debayo 36 England DF Jordan Turnbull 37 Scotland MF Harley Willard 38 England MF Sam McQueen 39 England MF Josh Sims 40 England FW Sam Gallagher 42 England MF Jake Hesketh 45 England FW Ryan Seager 46 England MF Dominic Gape 47 England FW Marcus Barnes 49 England FW Olufela Olomola 50 England DF Alfie Jones England GK Harry Lewis Benin DF Richard Bakary England DF Ollie Cook I think I'd pick Rodriguez and Austin

A quick look at the Match dates and the U23s fixtures should pretty much confirm that we'll be participating: EFL Trophy Group Stage 29 August - 4 September 2016 (midweek between the Sunderland H and Arsenal A games, no first team fixture and the U23s have no match between 28 Aug and 12 Sep - this is not an International break week). 3-9 October 2016 (midweek after Leicester A, no first team fixture and Burnley H isn't until 10 days later, no U23 match between 23 September and 14 October, but it is an International Break) 7-13 November 2016 (midweek after Hull A, no first team fixture and Liverpool H isn't until 10 days later, no U23 match from 31 October to 21 November, also an International Break) Looks like the non-internationals will be making up the overage contingent for two of those dates then...

Says here that Spurs and Arsenal were concerned with it clashing with International breaks: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jul/08/premier-league-clubs-opt-out-of-revamped-english-football-league-trophy and it also says Saints are planning on participating. ...and that Man City have international U21 games, as you said: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/36763761 We're allowed to field 5 over 21 players in the matches though, shall we see how good a side we can put out under that criterion?

Just spotted on the Wiki page that they are indeed seeding the invited teams, so there will be one of those per group (and therefore we can't play another invited team), so the odds of drawing the Skates in a regionalised N/S and E/W draw will actually be 1/3 as we will be drawn against 3 of the 9 non-seeded teams... and that at least ONE game will be played at the "Invited Clubs'" first team home ground. There is also an extra point for winning a penalty shoot out after a draw.

It hasn't been confirmed that we're turning down the invitation, and it has been confirmed that we've been invited. Given that everyone else who's turned it down has publicised it, I'd be very surprised if we were out and no-one (not even the Echo) had reported it.

It didn't, they just hadn't announced it. MLG knew.

Come to think of it, if you're looking for a non-lucrative draw in the EFL Trophy South (West) group stages, how about Newport County?

Its a group stage now, so you could get 4 of the 5 you mentioned all in one group. They'd have to be daft not to split it so the Academies are seeded evenly across the groups though. Also I don't think Brighton U23s v Portsmouth is particularly lucrative...

Bad news for people who don't want to cart a ticket around with them and have to get it home again. The worst thing about it is the "unreserved seating for Espanyol" rule, you're going to get loads of helmets thinking they've booked their seat for both...