CONGRATULATIONS to Bristol City for winning the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy (JPT). They might be an unlikeable club led by an unlikeable man who thinks like Richard Nixon but speaks like Vicky Pollard, but at least they are a football club.

For as tarnished and often tedious as the JPT is, the recently-floated idea of allowing in B-teams is horrible. FA chairman Greg Dyke’s original plan to parachute these cuckoos into the Football League was rightly rejected, but that at least was based on giving young English players competitive football, so what exactly will six games against half-strength teams, and one big final, offer them?

And while last Sunday’s final wasn’t the biggest day in football, for 72,315 people it had some merit. And it proved that despite being just a year younger than Bristol City 1982 Ltd, the Trophy does have some credibility.

Strangely though this proposal comes from within the League. The organisation seems to be offering the Trophy in the hope of pacifying the friends of Richard Scudamore, much like giving a zombie a nibble of your liver to stop them wanting your braaaaaains. Or letting Vlad Putin take the Donbass region of Ukraine...

Any viable solutions such as redistribution of wealth, or of player talent, are clearly off the Dyke agenda. Instead the problems of poor pitches, bad facilities and limited coaches will continue to widen the gap between grassroots and cosseted elite. Can there be a connection between that and the fact that Man City haven’t had an academy-produced debutant in six years?

So could Swindon’s model provide an alternative? After all, Town give loanees much of what this junior elite need: high-quality competitive development. Our seven young internationals show that technical and tactical thought don’t stop on the lower slopes of football’s pyramid.

But such ideas aren’t widespread enough. Just this week Scotland’s under 19 coach dropped Real Madrid’s Jack Harper for being a “luxury” player. And if that is what we call youth development, demanding a “physical side and runners”, English football will keep being dominated, on and off the pitch, by the biggest and the strongest.