Hey everybody, I am from America, and I have a few questions about your reserve teams. As you might know, there is really nothing similar in American sports (minor league baseball is probably the closest) and I was hoping you could explain the logistics a little. First of all, as I understand it, reserve teams in England are composed of the backups and younger players with the regular squad, as opposed to a situation where there's an entirely separate team (like say a Barcelona B team or Bayer Leverkusen that compete in the lower divisions), with the reserve team travelling with the rest of the team, right? So are reserve games played on the same day as the regular team's games? Are they played on the same field? Assuming they are, does a ticket to the 'real' match get you into the reserve game as well? Are reserve matches attended well at all? I'd appreciate your help a lot, thanks.
reserve games are usually midweek.. Big clubs will try to play their reserve games on another pitch at another venue... I suppose a poorer lower division team would also play its reserve games on their home ground. I think a season ticket holder would get into reserve games... prices for reserve games are fairly cheap compared to the tickets for first team games... Most reserve games are poorly attended... Maybe a reserve game would pull a decent crowd if there is attractive opposition. A side like man utd or liverpool might attract a decent crowd... But these games would only pull afew thousand.. never a full house..
Liverpool play their reserve games at Chester City's Deva Stadium. At the recent game against United a crowd of 5,000 was present (and United televised it to all 13 viewers of MUFC TV at a cost of £500,000 ... )
Yeah reserve teams are for youngsters or first team players coming back from injury. Attendance wise it varies. Not long ago Leicester decided to make it a family day and got attendances of over 15,000. They must have been charging pennies though as they are now 30 mill in debt. How ironic.
at sunderland you get into all reserve games for free with a season ticket. however the ground (new ferens park) is a dump, and is so cold you often expect to see snowdrifts piled around the pitch and polar bears wandering along the goal line There are usually only about 3-4 thousand daft enough to put up with this. I have been one of them several times.