Oldham Athletic are set to host Leicester City’s £45 million rated “U21’s” on Tuesday night in the third round of the Checkatrade Trophy.
Leicester U21’s reached the last 16 after knocking out Scunthorpe United 2-1 in the last round, but caused a lot of controversy having fielded a £45m squad that featured the likes of £25 million rated Kelechi Iheanacho and Leonardo Ulloa (31), Ben Hamer (30), Yohan Benalouane (30) in the match.
In comparison, Oldham Athletic beat Bradford City in the second round of the Checkatrade Trophy through a goal from Tope Obadeyi. The told cost of the squad was £50,000 which was spent on Full Back Cameron Dummingan from Burnley following his loan spell with the club.
Should Leicester be allowed to field this team for the U21’s against Football League teams who financially need to progress in this tournament as clubs will benefit from financial prizes as they progress through the competition which includes £10,000 per win and £5,000 per draw during the Group Stage, increasing prizes for following Knockout Stage victories and a £100,000 prize sum for the eventual winner.
Latics boss Richie Wellens believes a lot of the youngsters involved with those academy sides are not up to scratch and claimed it was evident in Oldham’s 4-1 win over Newcastle’s U21’s in the group stage.
“These academy managers think they’ve got good teams and good players, but when they put them in at a proper level they get shown up,” he told MEN Sport.
“They’ve been finishing bottom of the group stages and now there are only two teams left, and the only reason Leicester are through is because they go away to Scunthorpe and play £45m worth of talent.”
“I’ve not got a problem with that because that’s the rules, and if they’ve got players who are eligible to play then they can, but my first view of the tournament is how far behind the under 21 players are.”
“We played Newcastle here and they told us that we could have any of those players on loan if we wanted, but I was watching and thinking that I wouldn’t take any of them.”