Blame the Loan System

Article by Brian McLaughlin

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N A few seasons time there could be Premier League B teams in the English lower leagues, after Greg Dyke unveiled radical changes to English Football.

The FA Chairman revealed the findings of the Commission he set-up to identify the problems facing young English players in the Premier League, and among his recommendations is a newly established ‘League Three’ to be drafted into the football pyramid.

The league would consist of Premier League B teams and also a selection of sides from the Conference. However, the B teams would not be able to enter the Championship and their squads must consist of thirteen players trained in England from a possible twenty-five.

However, Dyke’s radical proposals could cause irreparable damage to the lower divisions and are punishing the poorer clubs for the mistakes of richer clubs. After all, it’s hardly Accrington Stanley’s fault that the likes of Newcastle look across the English Channel instead of their youth academies; or that Chelsea stock-pile dozens of players only to loan them out again.

It is the failure of the richer clubs and more importantly the disgusting lack of intervention into their exploits by toothless governing bodies that are failing younger players. Instead of confronting the serious problems blighting the English top-flight, the FA are yet again kow-towing to the elite by creating a new division to accommodate players that the rich clubs do not need but decide to hoard in a manner that undermines the integrity of competition. It is easier to upset Chesterfield and Macclesfield than Chelsea and Manchester City it would seem.

For the real problem facing football that no one likes to talk about is the loan-system which allows clubs to stock-pile all the best players, use only a fraction of them, and pass on the crumbs to other clubs. Allegedly you are only supposed to have a twenty-five man squad, or rather that is what the competitions permit you to register, but in reality the richest clubs have more players than that. Much more. Chelsea for example, can loan out twenty-five players in a single season and still retain a twenty-five man squad. So that is 50 players. Is it any wonder young English players are struggling to make the breakthrough at Stamford Bridge when there are fifty of you vying for a place in a starting line-up? What are the FA doing about this? They’re advocating more loans of course!

We have a situation in football where the richest clubs are signing players to exorbitant wages and have far too many players that they own and conversely we have lower league clubs with fewer players they actually own and too many that they loan. That creates a dependency culture: lower-league football clubs will always need loanees to survive them through a gruelling 46 game league season and guess who has too many players? The elite clubs.

So I am going to propose something radical myself: it is time to scrap the loan system. Football’s vast inequality has allowed the loan system to be exploited as a convenient way to hoard dozens of footballers, many of whom have little chance of playing for their parent clubs at all. Rich owners can sit back and watch their players develop, knowing full-well that they may be getting a ‘new’ signing at the end of the season.

If we scrap the loan system there will be more players to go around for everyone: players who do not get game-time will be demanding transfers if their manager can’t allow them out on loan. Does a club really deserve a player if they do not play him? Manchester United fans may watch in disbelief at their midfield problems and yet see Paul Pogba dominating games for Juventus, but it’s their own fault for failing to play him. Just think at the amount of young talented British players who are not getting game-time dropping down to the lower leagues or even heading abroad?

Scrapping the loan system will reinvigorate football: we won’t have situations where players are at clubs for several years and have hardly kicked a ball for the senior side because they are consistently farmed out on loan. Surely if you do not believe a player is good enough for your first-team, you don’t sign him? And if you believe he is one for the future, you still keep him happy by giving him the odd game here and there?

Furthermore, abolishing the loan system will provide stability. Lower league sides will actually be able to build teams without the constant chopping and changing that happens every summer when half the team are returning to their parent clubs with managers frantically trying to bring in yet more loanees. That’s not progress.

I am sure there are romantic stories about a player being loaned to another club and that benefiting his return to the senior side. But couldn’t the senior side have achieved this anyway? For example, Ross Barkley was hardly a World-Beater in the Championship to the extent that Everton had a fight on their hands to keep him when he returned? Roberto Martinez actually believing in Barkley’s ability and integrating him further into the first-team is which helped his career. In addition, Connor Wickham has saved Sunderland’s season but he was recalled from a loan-spell at Leeds United where he was very average. The success story of loan players is as much the failure of parent clubs to realise what they had in the first place.

It suits big clubs to have a loan system, because frankly they buy too many players anyway. Otherwise, why would you be losing players? If players are good enough they will break into the first-team, if they are not good enough or managers fail to recognise their talents they can transfer to another club and their new club can reap the rewards for believing in a player. Sadly, there’s too much self-preservation involved in the loan-system to see it being abolished and instead of looking at one of the key issues Dyke is merely trying to dig the elite out of a hole and yet again it’s those at the bottom who suffer as a result.

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