There are two types of professional footballer.

First, you have the Premier League and Championship-type players who are brought up in the world of luxury, from the facilities at their disposal to everything being done for them.

Then, on the other side of the coin, you have what I would call working-class footballers. They have to wash their own training kit and sometimes might not know where they’re going to train from one day to the next.

Over the years, competitions like the FA Vase and Johnstone’s Paint Trophy have provided a way for the ‘working-class footballer’ to live out his boyhood dream of playing at Wembley.

But this week, Football League clubs backed a proposal allowing Premier League clubs to field B teams in the JPT.

So, is this a good thing or is it just the beginning of the end for the working-class footballer’s dream?

Well, there could be benefits. Premier League clubs fielding under-21 sides might bring more supporters through the gates, which could bring in a little more revenue for lower league clubs.

You’d be matching up Manchester United with the likes of Morecambe, whose only other opportunity to play the big boys is in the FA Cup or the League Cup. For some supporters and players, that would only come round once in a lifetime.

On the other hand, it could end up costing clubs because supporters wouldn’t turn out if they felt a game between their first team and someone else’s U21s wouldn’t be competitive.
The players might not take the game too seriously if it felt more like a reserve team game.

Let’s not forget, the whole reason for scrapping the reserve system was because it wasn’t competitive enough.

Greg Dyke’s proposal is based on the successful Spanish model of bringing through good young talent. He wants to bring through more English talent by using this model along with the UEFA sanctions where 20 of your 25 players have to qualify under the home-grown rule and 19 of them have to be under 21.

There is a loophole to this, where as long as you sign the player between the ages of 15 and 21, on a minimum of a three-year contract, they are classed as home-grown. Big clubs are now exploiting this loophole by finding the best young players in Europe and bringing them to England.

In this country, we're lucky to have four fully professional leagues and a good non-league structure, which creates opportunities for players to get to Wembley. Walking up those magic steps to lift a trophy is something that will forever be in the memory of those players and their families.

So will the national side and lower-league teams really benefit from the B-team plan or will it be the same old big clubs prospering? We’ll have to wait and see.