Aldershot Town have confirmed that, following a restructure, the club’s academy has transitioned its under-21 side into a B team for the start of the 2024-2025 season.

The club have made the change with the aim of seeing more academy players successfully progressing and challenging for opportunities at first-team level.

The Shots have created a structure that closely aligns the academy to the first team, while giving their young and talented players access to senior football through a supervised and structured loans programme, and providing the players in the B group with the training and support for them to step up to the next level at the club.

The structure allows the club to focus on the individual needs of the players in the group, who will deal with first-team staff more frequently and participate in fixtures with Aldershot Town throughout the season.

The following youngsters will form the B team group for the coming season: Joe Lewis-Evans, Freddie Stanley, Louis Hutchings, Harry Thorpe, Billy Walsh, Mark Holley, Toby Nelson, Milo Derham, Eddie Cooper, Charlie Sell, Kian Salt, Alex Walder, Morgan Elliott and Zion Nditi.

Several of the B team players are on development contracts with the club.

Aldershot Town academy manager Richard Anderson said: “We are all delighted for all the boys who are progressing into our newly formed B team group for the coming season.

“We are striving to structure the academy in a way that allows us to provide the first team with a succession of talent year on year, and these boys have demonstrated high and consistent levels of performance throughout their time with us.

“It is an exciting time for the academy with the progress that has been made in the past two seasons.

“With six academy players having made their first-team debuts during this time, we are hoping these boys will be the next group of players to make an impact at first-team level.

“It is a challenge that will no doubt push them to even greater levels of performance in the demanding environment of senior football.

“I'm sure everyone connected with Aldershot Town joins me in congratulating them for their achievements and wishing them the best in their continued journey with the club, as the hard work now starts for them.”

Aldershot Town first-team manager Tommy Widdrington added: “We’re really excited to be going ahead with this restructure as we all believe it will provide our talented youngsters with a better pathway to our first team.

“We have a number of players in our current first-team squad who have already made the step up from our academy sides in previous years and our new B team will provide a higher standard of opposition for our latest batch of talents, while allowing them to work a lot closer to the first-team environment.

“I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the players that I’ve seen in academy games and in our own training sessions when we’ve needed extra bodies and believe the future is bright.”