Do the ‘Big Clubs’ have time to develop their own youth players? Quite simply the answer is ‘no’. Patience certainly isn’t a virtue in the top echelon of the English game. The pressure exerted on the top teams, mostly by themselves, affects the amount of time a club is willing to wait for a player to fulfil their potential. The pressure is of course all revenue based, with the current top six clubs in the Premiership all vying for trophies, and the prospect of Champions League football. With recent questions over the success of the national team being brought up after every international game, surely there must be a switch of emphasis in the Premiership towards nurturing young players and giving them a chance at the top table.
You could of course point to the quota of home grown players that has now come into effect, but the majority of the players that can be considered home grown are not from this country, and therefore do not have an impact on our own national team.
A look at the current England Under-21 squad will tell you that only 10 players out of the 23 come from the top 6 teams and of those top 6 only Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Arsenal have contributed towards that. Although this isn’t exactly a low percentage, the players who have been selected aren’t exactly first team regulars, some are squad players, and some don’t even make the bench at their respective clubs. You can only really suggest that Chris Smalling (Manchester United) and Kieran Gibbs (Arsenal) come close to regular first team action.
The other top 6 players have all been shipped out on loan to other Premiership teams, excluding Henri Lansbury, although he helped Norwich achieve promotion to the Premiership. The likes of Danny Welbeck, who has had a fantastic season at Sunderland, in which time he earned himself a call-up to the England first team, and featured in the 1-1 draw with Ghana, was considered surplus to requirements at Manchester United. The argument here would suggest that he has improved immensely in his time at Sunderland, which would justify his move up north, but at the start of the season Manchester United had just signed Javier Hernandez, a young, unknown quantity as far as the English league is concerned and he has flourished because of the confidence Sir Alex Ferguson has shown in him.
So the question is why can’t Ferguson show the same faith in his own academy products? The same can be said for Daniel Sturridge at Chelsea, who were struggling with the inconsistency of their strikers, but they were willing to send another promising English talent to Bolton, where Jack Wilshere also thrived last season, and he too has excelled under Owen Coyle scoring 8 goals in 12 games, which is a far greater return than that of Fernando Torres, who was a mid-season buy costing £50 million and only managed 1 goal in 18 games.
Another look through the current Under-21 squad will show us plenty of names making the headlines because they have been linked to clubs in the top 6. The likes of Phil Jones, Jordan Henderson and Jack Rodwell, to name a few have been heavily linked to Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United respectively. This as well as showing the financial muscle these teams have over the likes of Blackburn, shows a frailty and lack of confidence in their own youth set-ups, and will make their current crop of youngsters question whether it is worth them wasting their time trying to break into their respective first teams, when they could just as easily leave for a mid-table club and have a chance at impressing on the big stage.
I am not by any means suggesting that clubs shouldn’t send out their players to gain some first team experience, but when they have young exciting prospects on loan at other Premier League clubs doing a job against the teams they would be facing with their parent club, surely it makes sense to show a little faith, and give them a fair crack at first team football, in what is likely to be a better team than the one they have been loaned to.
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