Quote: Beaujangles "Thought the reserves were totally funded through our excellent volunteers,so it's a free hit in that sense.'"
Yes, funding through volunteers, donations, sponsoring and a whole host of other initiatives.
From memory those that do all the work in collecting money didn't decide what to spend it on, that was left to the club and the club chose the reserve team.
Those that unselfishly do all the work for the love of the club would still do it if the club decided to spend it on some other area such as signing established first team players.
It's not free in that sense as the tens of thousands of pounds that have been raised and spent on the reserves could go directly to the first team now.
If it's so important to use every advantage such as loan and DR players to get the result against our nearest rivals, which ironically is often at the expense of reserve team players because there not yet good enough, then it seems inconsistent to run a reserve side when our rivals have largely stopped doing so especially when we are well behind the spending power of our main rivals.