Inside the Barclays U18 Premier League and How Bolton Fit
into It  As Head of Academy Coaching and Development, Sammy Lee
must be proud of his boys - Scott Heavey  We've been following
the Bolton U18's quite closely this season, as they're the only
Bolton team doing well, but not quite close enough to have
figured out just how the academy system works. Today, we found
out. Mostly.  Today was meant to be Bolton U18's last match of
the season (it has now been postponed, due to a frozen pitch).
My initial reaction was 'well, that makes sense, there are only
8 teams in the league'. This soon gave way to 'but what do they
do for the rest of the year?' and 'why are there only 8 teams in
the league?' and 'is there not a single dry pitch to play on in
Bolton?'. So I set out to answer these questions, to figure out
exactly how the Barclays U18 Premier League worked. This turned
out to be much more complicated than I had anticipated, as there
isn't really a good explanation published by the Premier League,
but between