Town Grouped With Colchester and Gillingham in EFL Trophy - Ipswich Town News
Town will be joined by Colchester United, Gillingham and a yet to be named U21 side from a club with a category one academy in their EFL Trophy group.
The game with the League Two U's will see manager Paul Lambert reunited with his old club, while keeper Tomas Holy will potentially lock horns with his former side, the Gills, for a third time.
The identity of the U21 team won’t be confirmed until it is drawn on Friday live on talkSPORT at 12.30pm when the dates of the fixtures will also be announced.
The competition, featuring all the League One and Two teams plus 16 U21 sides and known as the Checkatrade Trophy in recent seasons, is split on a north-south basis with eight groups in each region.
The Blues’ first ever EFL Trophy group fixtures - they play one EFL team at home, one away and the U21 team at home - will be played in the weeks commencing 2nd September, 7th October and 11th November.
The 16 clubs whose U21s will be in the competition this season are Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Norwich City, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Town’s group will almost certainly not feature Norwich City’s U21s with the authorities having prevented "high-profile clashes” with local rivals at that stage of the competition in previous seasons.
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