Martinez on the Loan System

SSN keep showing a Martinez interview today and he's going on about how the loan rules in the PL should be changed to match the UEFA ones (which allow loaned players to play against their parent club).

Personally I think he's talking crap. The way I see it, the club hasn't committed to buying the player, they've gone for a cut-price loan option and in many cases aren't even paying his full wages. How can a player being paid by his parent club play against them? The rules are well-known at the start of the season and that's the gamble you take. Same as when people moan about last-minute recalls etc. It's the risk you take by relying on loans.

He's talking specifically about Barry, who can't play against Man City. In that instance, the reason he's on loan is probably because Everton couldn't afford to match the wages he's on at Man City, who will still be subsidising them. With that in mind it's the player's fault for being a greedy **** isn't it? He knows he can't get in Man City's team so he's gone to Everton, but he still wants the salary of a big club player? Of course he's entitled to that but it means he's still a Man City player and he shouldn't play against them. Seems Martinez and Barry want to have their cake and eat it.

I also thought the Courtois situation was bizarre, because if as UEFA said, the agreement that they had to pay Chelsea to play him against them was against the rules, how was the loan ever allowed to go ahead? How can you later change the agreement? What if Chelsea would never have agreed to loan him out without that clause? What if UEFA decided they were going to change the rules of Livermore's loan deal and slap an extra £5m loan fee in there that we have to pay? Is it very different?

Thoughts?

 

These angry posts of yours are becoming more and more prevalent.

Time for a name-change to PMT, perhaps?

 

People call me that when they're being extremely witty; usually people who can't bear me criticising the owners.

Anyway, this thread isn't angry at all. I thought it was worth debating.

I agree about the cup-tied thing because, following on from my OP, if you've paid for the player he's yours and I don't see what point their is in singling out cup competitions and saying players who've moved can't play in those games specifically. I don't see how it's different to league games.

But on loans, why shouldn't clubs like Man City loan players to clubs in the same league? If a smaller club wants to loan a player knowing that he's ineligible for two games a season that's their problem. Players like Barry might still be rotting at Man City instead of enjoying his renaissance at Everton. I just think it's really soft of Martinez moaning about it now as if he didn't know about the rules when he agreed that deal.

 

I think it makes our game look dodgier, its like suggesting we cant trust players to try their best against their parent clubs whereas they are trusted in every other country.

Take Monday night in Serie A for example, where Sassuolo's Zaza had probably the best game of his life playing against his parent club Juve. He took the opportunity to shine to try and get a game for them in the future. And Jose this week on about Coirtois (sp?). He's said all along "He's an Atleti player" and he's right.

 

I reckon the players would be fine with it, but it's the parent clubs I think don't get a fair deal if they're not allowed to say who their player plays against, or in Chelsea's case, the terms of the loan agreement!

 

Funnily enough PLT I spoke to your favourite person at work today

 

Also if you loan a player I think it should be up to the parent club whether they allow said player to play against them, I think it should be their discretion as opposed to a straight no, especially if they're subsidising that players wages

 

Martin Samuel wrote an article about this. Basically through FFP Everton cant afford to buy their loan players, so are they in an artifical position now?

Me I'm dead against the loan system. A loan should be for 3 months maximum. After that you buy him or he goes back to his club. He then cant go out on loan again till the next season.
Big clubs just hoover up all the talent. This would stop it and as you say make a player choose, massive salary and sit on your arse or great salary and play football.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...Lukaku-Barry-Deulofeu-Wengers-right-moan.html

There is one problem with Arsene Wenger’s complaint about Everton and the loan system. Arsenal have been involved in 14 loan transfers themselves this season. None as effective as Romelu Lukaku, admittedly, but whose fault is that? It is hardly Everton’s responsibility that Arsenal do not play the loan game very well.
So let’s start by saying that the club challenging Arsenal for fourth place have done nothing wrong. Most fans admire Everton’s rootsy status and wish them well.
Roberto Martinez has done an outstanding job and Bill Kenwright is the type of wealthy local supporter who should be in charge throughout the Premier League. ‘If you’re going to take me, take me now,’ a classically overwrought Kenwright implored after Sunday’s impressive win over Arsenal. Lord knows how he’ll react if they make it to the Champions League.
To reach that level, having lost a long-serving manager plus one of their best players to Manchester United, will be an extraordinary feat and great for the English game. A new club breaking into the staid elite is always welcome. Everton, like neighbours Liverpool in their tilt at the title, are winning the popular vote.
And now the but, because you know there is always going to be a but . . . those loans. Wenger’s right. It isn’t on.
In regulatory terms they’re fine, obviously, and completely within the rules. Everton have been very smart in exploiting the nuances of the player market and good luck to them in that. Sam Allardyce kept Bolton Wanderers afloat due to his astute manipulation of temporary transfers and the club have missed his keenness since.
So it is not that Everton have contravened any regulations or dealt underhandedly to secure the services of Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Gerard Deulofeu on loan this season. It is just that the loan system is an anomaly in these days of financial fair play, because the two concepts are idealistically incompatible.
That sometimes happens. Open-door immigration might be considered a good, progressive policy. The welfare state most certainly is. Yet open-door immigration and the welfare state combined are potentially catastrophic to a nation’s resources.
The same principle shadows the loan system and FFP. They might both be considered valuable in isolation, but together they conflict.
What would Lukaku cost Everton? Let’s say upwards of £25m. Deulofeu is a rising star in the Barcelona academy who has represented Spain at every level from Under 16 through Under 21, and was voted the Golden Player at the UEFA Under 19 European Championship. He wouldn’t come cheap.
Then there is Barry, a squad player at Manchester City and now 33, but even so he might have commanded £6m as a permanent transfer in the summer. Total: somewhere north of £50m, maybe as much as £60m.
Could Everton have afforded that? Absolutely not, even with the sale of Marouane Fellaini. By the time wages are taken into account, it might even have put them in contravention of financial fair play.
Yet FFP is harsher on costly permanent transfers than loans. If Everton borrow they can skirt their financial limitations. So a club that buys outright, that offers permanence and meets the bill in full, risks being kicked out of Europe. One that creates a temporary structure, that shares the costs, that runs a shop with its rivals’ stock, gets the green light.
That isn’t fair. Michel Platini, president of UEFA, says that living off the investment of their owner gives a club an artificially inflated position. Yet that is what Everton have achieved, simply by different means. Chelsea’s Lukaku and Manchester City’s Barry, in particular, have propelled them to a peak they would not have been able to attain under their own means. Yet, while self-improvement by owner is outlawed and scorned, by loan it is approved. How can that be?
This is the future. As financial fair play bites, clubs will find all manner of ways to sidestep its effects. Barcelona have recently fallen foul of FIFA for contravening the rules on cross-border transfers for Under 18 players, yet it is only natural that with top-end signings having such an impact on the balance sheet, the youth market will overheat.
Why wait until a player is 25 and pay £40m with UEFA looking on disapprovingly if a deal can be struck for a tenth of that at a young age? FFP makes it worth the gamble.
Manchester City have signed Rodney Kongolo of Feyenoord, who is already being compared with Patrick Vieira. Kongolo is 16 and would previously have made his name at his first club, like 20-year-old brother Terence. Now Feyenoord risk losing both as Terence becomes disenchanted without Rodney.
It is undoubtedly a harmful trend for smaller clubs, yet from City’s point of view, the money risked represents better FFP value than buying Kongolo later for a much larger sum.
So important is the youth market these days that City’s scouts even have a piece of computer kit, a very upmarket FIFA 14 almost, that shows how the teenage protege will link up with Sergio Aguero, or play beside Yaya Toure in midfield. Mums, dads, kids and agents are apparently very impressed.
Chelsea have placed similar emphasis on accumulating the next generation, farming young players out to Vitesse Arnhem in the Dutch league which, again, artificially inflates their league position.

Trouble in paradise has arrived, however, with the claim from former chairman Merab Jordania that the arrangement between the clubs runs deeper than youth loans, and Vitesse actually take their orders from ‘London’.
‘I wanted to be champion of the Netherlands, but London did not,’ he said. ‘Ambition is fine but Vitesse may not be in the Champions League with Chelsea.’ The Dutch Football Federation are investigating these claims. Vitesse are now fourth, having topped the table on January 18.
Arsenal are complaining most bitterly about the loan system, as it is their safe fourth-placed berth that is under threat from Everton. Yet the suggestion that it distorts the league would carry greater weight if Wenger was not perfectly happy for Arsenal’s purposes to disrupt other competitions.
Arsenal have two players of little consequence in on loan: Emiliano Viviano, a 28-year-old goalkeeper at Palermo, who spent last season with Fiorentina and has not played a first-team game in 2013-14, and Kim Kallstrom, the catastrophic January transfer acquisition from Spartak Moscow, who turned out to be as seriously injured as the player he was replacing. Kallstrom has featured for 11 minutes as a substitute against Swansea City, during which time Arsenal lost a 2-1 lead.

Yet Arsenal’s loans out are substantial, amounting to 12 players: Damian Martinez and Benik Afobe (Sheffield Wednesday), Johan Djourou (Hamburg), Daniel Boateng (Hibernian), Ignasi Miquel (Leicester City), Nicholas Yennaris (Brentford), Francis Coquelin (Freiburg), Chuks Aneke (Crewe Alexandra), Joel Campbell (Olympiacos), Chuba Akpom (Coventry City), Park Chu-young (Watford) and Wellington (Murcia).
So, while taking a high moral stance on the Premier League, the competitions Wenger doesn’t mind influencing include the Champions League, Europa League, Championship, League One, the Bundesliga, Greek Super League, Scottish Premiership and Spain’s Segunda Division. He doesn’t mind affecting your club, he just thinks it is wrong when it happens to his.
As Leicester have earned promotion from the Championship, Olympiacos are the champions of Greece, Murcia are fighting to make the promotion play-offs in Spain, Brentford are second in League One, Hamburg and Freiburg may yet avoid relegation from the Bundesliga and Crewe Alexandra are still battling to avoid dropping to League Two, a great many managers may distrust Arsenal’s impact on their status.

Arsenal’s 12 loan players have made 207 appearances for their temporary clubs this season. Now there is talk of an Arsenal deal to buy Alvaro Morata of Real Madrid for £8m in the summer with a fixed buy-back price for the selling club in two years’ time. What is that if not a two-year loan with bells and whistles?
What Everton have been allowed to do is flawed, but every club plays the loan market for all it is worth and some with more talent than others. Indeed, now financial fair play has been so inexpertly grafted on top, the clamour for loans will only intensify.
Fortunately, Everton seem committed to their youth policy, too, yet others will not be as scrupulous. What does the production line matter when UEFA regulations as good as encourage the temporary acquisition of ready-made first-team players? How can it be the permanent transfers that are viewed suspiciously?
Reel them in, loan them out, drag them back, send them packing — and then we wonder why there is no loyalty in football.

 

Have to say I disagree with him Chazz. If the other club is agreeing to it it's fine. It's not like you can just go and get 10 top quality loan players without negotiating/paying for it. If they could then everyone would. It's a level playing field. What I don't agree with is the Watford/Udinese/Grenada situation. That's not a level playing field.

 

I thought if you each had a player on loan from the other club you could allow them to play against each other? I can't remember specifically but I thought there was an example of this either this season or last season.. perhaps Ireland at Stoke and someone on loan at Villa? Not sure.

 

The loan system is flawed in many ways as Chazz points out above, but who is using it wrongly? Is it the clubs loaning in the player? Giving them game time, a young player getting experience, allowing their parent club to see how good they could be, giving the player a chance to potentially restart their career either with a new club or even at the parent club, as well as international honours for the individual. I say no.
Is it the parent club? They want to give a player who, maybe a youth player or an older player who is coming back from injury, or a lack of form, or maybe doesn't seem good value for money, so put them in the shop window & see what they can get for them. It's kind of like putting a 'For Sale' sign in the back window of your car. Again I say no.
There are problems with clubs taking lots of young players & having no intention of playing them just so their competitors don't get them, then loaning them out, but how do you manage that from UEFA/FIFA's point of view? This is like spotting a dive without sufficient replays.
The loan system has it's flaws, as do many rules in football, however they are there for all teams to see at the start of each season, so everyone knows how they work.
The loans where they are not allowed to play against their parent club is only if the clubs agree with it, if not then they shouldn't be allowed to play, anyone remember Olifinjana for Cardiff & we had Gerrard, both played in that game, but only because both clubs agreed. I feel that the Courtois deal was wrong, if they had an agreement in place prior to the start of the season then it should have stood, if Athletico couldn't afford it then tough, that's their problem, it should never have been allowed to have any say from UEFA. However I think the only reason Chelski didn't appeal the outcome was probably due to the fact they'll have given some sort of nod to allow the Costa deal to go through, possibly at a discounted price, maybe £4 million?
The most bizarre deal that I have ever seen wasn't even a loan, it was David Livermore's transfer to Hull from Leeds, although we bought him, he wasn't allowed to play against them & from what I recall we ****ed him off so that we didn't have to pay any extra money to them.

 

I agree with most of that Bruce.

That Livermore deal was also bizarre because Leeds bought and sold him in the same window, without ever playing him.

 

The Simone Zaza thing is a bit more complicated, as he's a co-owned player, which I think has different rules. He did have a cracking game though, he's a neat little player.