Academy boss Mark Harrison: Checkatrade Trophy huge for West Brom's youngsters
Academy manager Mark Harrison has described the Checkatrade Trophy games as gold-dust for his young Albion players.
The Baggies start the competition away at Walsall tonight, after jumping at the chance to be included in the controversial tournament again as one of 16 category one academy sides.
Although James Shan’s under-21s lost all three of their group games last time out, Harrison says the experience was second to none.
And he’s looking forward to seeing his youngsters being put through their paces by professionals form League One and League Two once again.
“We certainly found it a fantastic experience for the young players,” he said. “We played against a number of senior professionals at their home grounds. We went down to Millwall and there was a decent crowd there.
“Lo and behold Millwall go on and get promotion. Steve Morrison comes off the bench and plays for x amount of minutes which is a great experience for our players. That was a real eye-opener for them – you can see the difference in the level that he was playing at.”
Despite the boycotts and the low crowds last season, the EFL decided to keep academy teams in this coming season’s competition.
And four new clubs – Tottenham, Manchester City, Newcastle, and Fulham – have decided to accept the invite for their academies this time.
“We think the competition is seriously valuable to our youngsters,” said Harrison. “Straight away, there was a consensus among the academy managers of Premier League clubs that this was a fantastic experience. That’s been shown by more clubs coming into it next year.”
Albion released 14 academy players this summer to give breathing space to a promising batch of under-16s.
The club have also sent 13 of their best youngsters out on loan this season, which means Shan’s team are likely to be a young outfit.
Because of that, Harrison is not expecting to win the Checkatrade Trophy, but he does want to get out of the regionalised group which includes League One pacesetters Shrewsbury Town and League Two Coventry City as well as the Saddlers.
“It’ll be a challenge for us because we’ll be relatively young,” he said. “We don’t have aspirations for winning it, you’ve got to be realistic, but if we can qualify out of the group that will be fantastic.
"A lot of people talk about the old reserve league when some of the first team that didn’t play on the Saturday would feature.
“Young players would pick up things in that environment, but the game isn’t structured in that way anymore.
“So this gives you an opportunity to play against those type of players.”
