Last season, the Premier League introduced the concept of a 25 man league squad for each club. And of those 25 men, at least 8 had to be ‘home-grown players’. A home-grown player is defined as a player registered to the Football Association for three full seasons (or 36 months) before turning 21. The idea was that it would encourage clubs to produce more British talent, and allow them to then play in the first team more regularly. Which is fine in theory, but ignores one thing about the Premier League. Money.
And while the biggest clubs in England have been spending lots of it in recent years, it’s tended to be on high profile foreign talent such as Fernando Torres, Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov. But with the introduction of a rule forcing all clubs to have a certain amount of home-grown players, the big spenders have started looking to the Premier League’s best English players.
It started early, when Manchester United announced that they’d signed Fulham’s Chris Smalling for a fee believed to be around £7-8million during the 2010 January transfer window. Which might seem like a small amount by Premier League standards, but Smalling had not even appeared in 10 games for Fulham at that point, and had been playing non-league football as recently as 2008. Last summer, Manchester City again went on a spending spree. They spent over £100million on players, including £18million (and Stephen Ireland) on Aston Villa’s James Milner. Despite the large fee, Milner failed to fully establish himself in City’s starting XI, with manager Roberto Mancini preferring to start two other high profile signings (David Silva and Mario Balotelli) ahead of him.
On January 27th this year, Chelsea bid £40million for Liverpool’s Fernando Torres. Liverpool rejected the offer, and also rejected a transfer request made by Torres the next day. Chelsea persisted, and finally signed Torres on January 31st for a fee believed to be £50million. As it was the last day of the transfer window, Liverpool faced playing the rest of the season without a central striker. In a frantic day of transfer activity, Liverpool had a bid of £30million for Newcastle’s Andy Carroll rejected. But just a few hours later, Newcastle accepted a £35million bid for Carroll. The fee was staggering. While Carroll had been enjoying a strong season with Newcastle, he was injured and had allegedly been available for as little as £1million following Newcastle’s relegation from the Premier League in 2009.
Flash forward to now, and almost as soon as the transfer window had opened, Man Utd and Liverpool have again splashed the cash on young English talent. Blackburn’s Phil Jones joined United for a fee in excess of £16million, despite being just 19 years old with less than 40 first team appearances, and Liverpool paid as much as £20million for Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson.
And you can expect to see more young players moving up the table to clubs challenging for the Premier League title soon. The likes of Gary Cahill (Bolton), Ashley Young (Aston Villa), Jack Rodwell (Everton), Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Southampton) and Connor Wickham (Ipswich) have all been linked with multi-million pound moves to the Premier League elite.
So what does that mean for the Premier League’s smaller clubs? Well, it’s not really a new phenomenon for their best players to leave for bigger clubs when they are highly rated. But now these teams have the upper hand, and as long as they get their best young talent signed up to long-term contracts, they can effectively fund their own transfer kitty by cashing in on their home-grown players.
It may not be the way the Premier League and FA imagined the home-grown players rule was going to work, but it will ultimately lead to more young English players playing at the highest level, and that can only benefit English football.
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So the system will work then? The big money will stay in England and filter down thru the leagues. Some might even get up to scotland!