So much spin going on and none of it can get around the simple fact that fans feel like it's a piss take to force our first team to play a youth team and call it a genuine competition. Then when you add in that the league teams don't want to risk a full side with an already tough fixture list, and the youth teams are half a fucking Prem reserve team, you've got a "competition" that's a couple of steps below reserve games.
I remember an article with Dario Gradi a couple of years or so ago talking about how broken the system was now that top tier clubs snatch every young player that might so much as be worth a punt just because they can. He said something on the lines of people are supposed to think it's great when you get a young Man U player on loan but what they don't realise is that twenty years ago you'd have signed them for free, developed them through your first team, and then either had them for a few seasons or made some money off them.
Teams like Chelsea have 70+ professional footballers on their books (not an exaggeration, I think Man City was over 80). Can't find the article that listed the size of the top Prem squads, but here's a glimpse
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/01/29/where-are-chelseas-28-on-loan-players1/
28 players out on loan. They take them as a punt, or simply to make money from loaning them out to other countries. A few of them, maybe, will even make the Chelsea side one day, but that's not the point. The point is protectionist bullshit where they control the supply of talent and profiteering where smaller clubs miss out on the long term potential of talent and miss out on money twice: they pay for the loan, and won't ever profit from a sale.
If you want youth players to get competitive football, try to set the system so that they sign for sides that might provide it to them. Don't shoehorn in fixtures of halfhearted youth sides vs. halfhearted league teams and expect anyone to buy into it.
