EFL Trophy - Matchday i - Harrogate Town vs Nottingham Forest U21s. Tuesday 5th September

[congo_red_49]

Apologies if there’s no interest, but I’ve taken it upon myself to do a match-day thread anyway.

What you need to know:-
This will be Forest’s first time entering an Under 21 side in this competition, although our senior team has previously competed, in the dark League 1 days, under the previous format.
The group stage is competed in a round-robin style, with the four teams in the group playing each other once. The Under 21 side will play all their games away from home. Three points are awarded for a win and one for a draw. All drawn games go straight to a penalty shoot out, with the winning team getting an extra point. The top 2 sides in each group advance to the knockout stage.

Teams:-
Rules of the competition state that our team must contain at least 6 players who were aged 21 or under on the 30th June, of the other players who may be aged over 21, we may only pick 2 who have made 40 or more senior appearances.
For Harrogate, their team must contain at least 4 ‘first-teamers’ - defined as a player who started either of the matches directly before or after the EFL Trophy fixture in question, a player that has started 40 or more senior matches or a player who has started at least the 10th-most matches for the club that season.

The opposition:-
Harrogate Town currently compete in League 2, having won promotion from the Conference via a play-off final victory over Notts County in August 2020.
They are know as the Sulphurites, after Harrogates’ famous sulphur springs.
Blacklisted former Hollywood actor Will Smith currently kills time by playing for them at centre back.

 

[Bonfy177]

Nice one Congo , interesting fact about Will Smith, be watching to see how the boys get on.

 

[Strummer]

Blacklisted former Hollywood actor Will Smith currently kills time by playing for them at centre back.

Do they play in black?

 

[congo_red_49]

Do they play in black?

They won’t let me remember.

 

[Your Dad's Ashamed Of You]

Is it on the tellybox anywhere?

 

[Rzar]

Is it on the tellybox anywhere?

You know we have lost sense of reality when we are asking whether Harrogate v Forest U21 will be on tv

 

[Your Dad's Ashamed Of You]

You know we have lost sense of reality when we are asking whether Harrogate v Forest U21 will be on tv

International breaks are tough.

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[Battered Sausage]

Harrogate has a yearly gift fair where buyers, shop owners, sales reps and account managers descend on the town to shag like rabbits for a week behind their partners back and go back home after and say what a dull week it was.


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[GOBIAS]

The sulphurites sounds like an Oxford student union chess team made up of geeky chemistry students.

 

[OLDMANRED]

Is it on the tellybox anywhere?

Might be on You tube. The under 21 matches are usually on

 

[Project Zeus]

International breaks are tough.

Sent from my CPH1941 using Tapatalk

It's a particularly tough old turkey, after the excitement of transfer deadline day and beating Chelsea on Saturday.

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[valspoodle]

Thanks for the explanation of the points scoring, Congo. I was wondering how, after only one game in one league, one team had two points and the other team 1 point.

 

[Steve B]

Looking forward to seeing how the U21’s get on in this. I notice that not many of the U21 teams seem to get through to later rounds, not even the big ones. Looks like a tough challenge for them, but I’m not ruling anything out for Forest these days.

 

[Steve B]

Also the U21’s are in an international league called the Premier League International Cup.
Kicks off next week and we’re in same group as PSV, Nice, Sparta Prague and Hertha Berlin plus 3 other English teams.

 

[RedDogChris]

I wander if we will see one or two new signings get some minutes?

 

[donny]

I wander if we will see one or two new signings get some minutes?

The thought that someone like Murillo could pick up a few minutes if hes around, as well as potentially one of the players returning from injury such as the housewives favourite.

 

[congo_red_49]

There’s probably some candidates for inclusion as experienced over 21s, such as Biancone. Although I doubt we’ll waste minutes on Arter or Shelvey.

 

[Trents]

Rules of the competition state that our team must contain at least 6 players who were aged 21 or under on the 30th June, of the other players who may be aged over 21, we may only pick 2 who have made 40 or more senior appearances.

Is this senior appearances at the club, in the nation, or career wide? Might be a chance for a few newbies to stretch their legs.

 

[donny]

Is this senior appearances at the club, in the nation, or career wide? Might be a chance for a few newbies to stretch their legs.

Career wide.

 

[Samba's Water Bottle]

The thought that someone like Murillo could pick up a few minutes if hes around, as well as potentially one of the players returning from injury such as the housewives favourite.

Willy got called up by Ivory Coast.

 

[donny]

Willy got called up by Ivory Coast.

I don't mean that one.

 

[incident]

So here's a hypothetical - if (and I'm not taking this for granted) we qualified for the next round and got a home draw -

Would, with the current demand for tickets and maybe with a bit of promotion, our U21s be able to get a bigger crowd than when our senior team played in this competition?

We never took it seriously in those dark days, rightly feeling it was beneath us, and so our home attendances looked like this:
31 October 2006, Brentford, 2,031
29 November 2006, Bristol City, 4,107
4 September 2007, Peterborough, 3,102

 

[tjhooker]

You can watch this on Harrogate's iFollow for £10

 

[congo_red_49]

So here's a hypothetical - if (and I'm not taking this for granted) we qualified for the next round and got a home draw -

Would, with the current demand for tickets and maybe with a bit of promotion, our U21s be able to get a bigger crowd than when our senior team played in this competition?

We never took it seriously in those dark days, rightly feeling it was beneath us, and so our home attendances looked like this:
31 October 2006, Brentford, 2,031
29 November 2006, Bristol City, 4,107
4 September 2007, Peterborough, 3,102

They wouldn’t be difficult numbers to beat…but I guess it could hinge on how interested the day-tripper, part-time fan is…which in itself could be driven by how strong of a team we field in the group matches.

 

[T Francis]

There’s a couple of Forest shirts in the Winter Gardens already