How new youth format including Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea is benefiting Sunderland this season

Sunderland Under-21s boss Graeme Murty says the revamped academy league format has benefitted his side this season - allowing them to test themselves against England’s best youth teams.

The Premier League 2 competition has been merged into one division this campaign, with 26 teams from category one academies, including Sunderland, forming one division.

That has allowed the young Black Cats, who were in the second division last season, to face stronger opponents, with Murty’s side set to face the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool later in the term. Despite the changes, Sunderland have held their own so far this year, winning three of their six league matches, while coming from five goals down to draw 5-5 with Manchester United last month.

“It’s been great,” Murty told the Echo when asked about the competition’s new format. “It’s been really good for us, mainly because any laxity or any mistakes we make really get punished now, as you will see from some of our scorelines. We are never shy about putting our players up against the best teams. We want to play the best teams and want to actually go and get any flaws exposed.

“We think that exposing them to good players early and often is a really good way of enhancing and improving their development so the more we can do that the better it will be for the players I think. They actually look at it as a really good challenge but also they can look and say ‘I want to be where that guy is.’

“We have a really, really young group, let’s not forget that so we’ve still got kids that have a lot of maturation to go, a lot of growth to go. For where they are physically we’re really pleased with the start they’ve made.”

Sunderland Under-21s also beat Peterborough Under-21s 2-1 in the Premier League Cup last time out, after the young Black Cats were beaten 3-2 by Tottenham Under-21s in their first group match. Murty’s side will now face Tottenham again in the league on Friday, October 27 at Eppleton CW.