I am guessing the lack of responses just proves that grassroots football U13 upwards means all the coaches are doing this. I took over a team last season, a team who lost every game double figures with the odd goal a game. Being the only coach with experience I set about getting to know the players what they are good at and not, what they like about football and where they like to play etc. Most of them had no or little football experience and training was chaos with some even choosing to climb fences rather than train. Come the end of the season the team lost a number of players who had developed quickly under me to team(s) in the same league (I’m told they spend most of the time bench warming in the new team), but I didn’t go out trying to poach players, I asked the loyal players to invite mates to training, lads who couldn’t get into other teams because they had no experience and set about training, playing and watching them grow.  This season we have still lost every game but only 1 by double figures, (it was raining quite bad ). We even took the league leaders to a half time 1-1 but, and here is what is now a big issue, I try to give all equal game time but some are not fit enough to manage it so I monitor them during the game and if they struggle I bring them off for a rest (no one should want to watch a kid struggling to run, right) but the players who have developed faster than others and really want to win are now not happy to be subbed for the ones who haven’t.  Problem is most who have fallen behind have not attended training as much, do not come to any external events, don’t put much effort in at training and complain if they think I have not given them the same game time.  So bring them on in a tight game against the league leaders saw us rack up another loss finishing 6-1 (we missed 10 chance to score as I had taken off our strongest goal scorning player and let 5 goals in as I had also taken off our 2 strongest defenders).  Out of 10 games played and lost we could have won 6 if Id have only played the strongest players.  I have however made a little change for the last 6 games, I informed all the players I will finish the season picking players based on attendance to training, attitude at training, fitness and then skills.  

So here I am, coming to the end of the season with a good competitive eight players who may get poached and some who could not care less. So, I asked the team to fill in an anonymous survey and the result was the stronger players want to be competitive and win more than they lose, the rest either did not respond or are happy just turning up.

What do I do now? Option A - Carry on as things are hoping the strong ones stay and if they don’t bring some more players in who can’t play but want to. Or. Option B - Inform the strong players we are doing a massive player shuffle and bringing in new players who can play and let the others go, who by the way won’t get into any U15s team in any league. 

Please note - I really only do this for the lads to be able to play so I’m just as happy with Option A as I am with B but almost EVERY team in our league are kicking players out, I almost feel like texting them all asking them to send me their rejects. (Poor kids).

The other thing on my mind is Im always telling them "Hard work often goes unrewarded but you get no rewards without hard work" < Heard that somewhere. So why should I keep thoes who dont put much effort in?