THE Wembley crowd of 74,434 for Sunday’s final was the tournament’s highest for seven years.

In Shaun Harvey’s eyes, that figure will endorse his comments a few days earlier that the Checkatrade Trophy has a future in its revamped format.

But the English Football League chief executive knows he struck lucky with a showdown between two fairly well-supported clubs.

Coventry, in particular, raised 43,000 followers – five times the number that watched League One’s basement boys beaten by City three weeks before.

Yeovil, with all due respect, against Reading’s academy would hardly have given the national stadium turnstiles similar hammer.

Harvey seems in no doubt that the Trophy revamp – controversially adding under-21 teams from those in the top two divisions who could be bothered, as well as bringing in group games – has been a success.

Clubs from League One and Two may beg to differ. Their views will be aired at a consultation meeting next Tuesday.

City fell two steps short of Wembley at Oxford but made £80,000 from their five-month stay in the competition.

For Stuart McCall, that was one of two positives to come out of it. The other was the opportunity early on to blood a few youngsters such as Ellis Hudson, Kwame Boateng and Tom Windle – although not as much as he would have liked.

But two crowds below 1,500 underlined the level of interest among the Valley Parade faithful.

There was also the farcical episode of City getting punished for subbing Colin Doyle just three minutes into the Bury home game.

The goalkeeper switch provoked national coverage and the Bantams were hauled up for going against the ‘integrity’ of the competition.

Half of the £3,000 fine was suspended after City angrily fought their corner but six months on it still rankles with McCall.

Any changes for next season, he says, must include a degree of flexibility to consider cases on their individual merit. City’s appeal may have got a sympathetic ear with many but it still cut no ice with the organisers.

McCall said: “We generally didn’t do anything wrong in the competition but still ended up getting fined. We didn’t break any rules.

“When we did get the fine, we had Nathan Clarke, Matthew Kilgallon, Stephen Darby and Rory McArdle as our back four.

“We must have broken the record for the number of appearances, something like 1,500-1,600 between them, and still ended up getting penalised.

“We had so many injuries early on to senior players that we had to give them game time.

“And how could we have left out Rouven (Sattelmaier) after playing so well in the first game?

“But you still need the five on the quota (out of the 11 top appearance makers). We were backed into a corner.

“We weren’t trying to be smart and making a point or anything like that.

“But we got fined exactly the same amount of money as others who broke the rules. I still can’t get my head around that.”

Some clubs made the call to stuff the selection rules altogether and just take the hit. Luton, who made it to the last four, took a £15,000 whack despite finishing on top of the group.

McCall said: “They went to Gillingham, who were in a higher division, and won there with a young team and still got fined.

“But they got to the semi-finals and made money out of it. They played it in a way that was benefiting their youngsters but were also getting good results from it.

“On attendances alone, you’d be hard pushed to say it’s been a success.

“It was mentally hard for senior pros. Prior to going to Morecambe, I said to them it will be like a game you played at school or in the youth team because there will be hardly anyone there – it was less than 1,000.

“The games did at least help us bring lads back from injury. But it also meant that we weren’t able to develop our younger ones, apart from early on when the senior players weren’t ready to come back, whereas the under-23 sides could play all theirs.

“We also had to travel down to Cheltenham and Oxford (twice) in successive weeks and were having to play lads a full game if we had a couple of injuries. Surely it would be better to keep it regionalised again, at least until the semi-finals.

“So if they are going to keep the competition, there are things that do need to be looked at.”