Tottenham Hotspur U21s have escaped relegation from the top flight of Premier League 2 after clubs voted through a change in the competition's format.
Injuries and other circumstances led to a difficult first half to the season for Wayne Burnett's development squad side as he had to put out relatively young starting XIs in the competition. Despite a return to form in 2023, losing just three matches this calendar year, Tottenham's U21s ended up being relegated on the final day from Premier League 2's division one as the second from bottom side despite their victory against West Ham United.
However, a turn of events has saved Spurs from dropping down to a lower division because the Premier League have confirmed to football.london that at their annual general meeting last week the clubs voted to shake up the format into a single-tier 'Swiss-style' format.
The new system will see all 25 category one academies field an U21 team in the same league next season, with promotion and relegation scrapped, thus sparing Tottenham from the drop. There had been concerns among clubs over how little the previous system was preparing players for first team football, with a focus on preserving league positions, stockpiling young players for too long to improve results, rather than concentrating on individual player development.
The Swiss model comes from chess and will be used in the Champions League from the 2024/25 season.
The 25 Premier League 2 teams will now be seeded into five pots based on their historical performance in the competition over the preceding three years, meaning each team will play 20 matches in the regular season, six fewer than Spurs were playing in division one but the same number as they would have played in division two.
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Each team will playing all the clubs in their own pot plus four or five teams in all other pots, either home or away. Then the resulting combined table will determine play-off positions, with the top 16 teams qualifying for the knockout stages.
The competition change will be a further boost to Tottenham, who enjoyed success with their U18s and U17s winning the Premier League Cups in both of those age groups.
There are also changes at the top for the club's youth set-up with Dean Rastrick leaving his role as academy manager in order to pursue new challenges.
