Well the FA have finally revealed their proposals to "save" Team England....what a pile of crap. Most contentious is the setting up of a new league - League 3, which will sit between League 2 and the Conference Premier and will be made up of up to 10 Prem clubs and 10 clubs from the Conference. Just how that will improve Team England is beyond me! Other change will see a ban on non-EU outside of the Prem - so what happens to a club with some of these players that get relegated? No doubt the compromise will be to allow them X years to move them on - but that will gone them a different playing field to the other clubs in the Championship. As I said, utter crap!
It really is another bit of total nonsense. Just another way to devalue the smaller clubs, allowing the Prem to cherry pick the kids that they want. Think they should go back to the drawing board and think again.
It is nonsense really. What are the other alternatives? A separate Under 21 league? Doesn't that already exits..... or even a different 'B' league? Something needs to be done to boost future growth of English players, but what? The Prem and the F.A. need to spend money on basic facilities for younger players to start, it is not like the Prem doesn't have money to spend!
It does seem to be an odd proposal - quite how playing 'the cream' of England's youth players against Conference players is expected to bring them on to a greater extent than loaning them to Championship, and below, clubs is anyone's guess. Presumably the EPL's much vaunted U21 league is proving to be a bit of a flop?
If the FA want to emulate Spain so much they should look at the coaching set-up and compare them. Spain have 1,000's more coaches than this country - there's a good point to start. But that will cost money and the FA don't want to spend all their Prem money do they. Not often I agree with Claridge, but he was spot on tonight on 5 Live.
I think the idea is very good. I think the Premiership clubs should chose the best young players and put them into reserve teams to keep their expensive imported players safe in their A teams. This would allow even more small nations to match England as the standard of the national team goes down.
This will devalue the quality of the Premier League, devalue the quality of the lower leagues, reduce the level of contact young players have with foreign players who have better technique, and not make the slightest difference to England's chances in the World Cup. However, I do like the idea of Manchester United/City/Chelsea/Liverpool B 0 Dover Athletic 3.
England manager Roy Hodgson: "We are much wiser than when this process began and now have a strong body of work that will stop us wondering how we compare to other countries." now I know why this puppet for the F.A. was given the job... Portsmouth chief executive Mark Catlin: "The wealth and riches of Premier League clubs will mean that money will be put into their B teams and in no time you will find the current League One populated by only B teams. It will destroy the whole fabric of the league structure. a more realistic prediction...we'll see how it folds out...
Given the high percentage of 'non-English' youth players in EPL U21 squads, this proposal doesn't really appear to address the problem of English players progressing to the national team. The Home Grown rule merely requires players to have been registered with an FA affiliated club for 36 months prior to their 21st birthday, regardless of age or nationality - so tinkering with the number requirements of Home Grown players per squad means nothing, it's the rules themselves that need to be addressed. Unless, of course, there is some 'master plan' in place - such as to take a step further with International Football, and have a 'World Cup' in which the EU will compete against Asia, Africa, America etc etc...
Just another case of the FA bowing down to the prem and it's money. All the Prem clubs will do is stock pile any decent yongsters using their EPPP rules, then send them out to these B teams. The smaller teams will get all their prospects pached, and for pittance, and then then will be playing against them... and it really will be men against boys in the matches As mentioned above, there are some rules in place and the problem is their hands are a little tied. 'Home Grown' doesn't mean 'Home Nationality'. They should be able to introduce some kind of rule staying there needs to be about 10 'home grown' in the 25 man squad but as part of that, at least 5/6 of these should be 'home naitonality', but sure the EU will kick off with that! Of course if the FA really had some balls, they would introduce something like a salary cap. Maybe not an individual one, but one across the whole playing staff. For example the Prem maybe could have one of about £65m. This would mean for a squad of 25 it could be an average of £50k a week, but it's down to the team how they spread this. They could have a few 'star' players, but would also have to have players on much lower wagers. The simple way of doing this would be to promote their youth... then the hope woud be by promoting the youth, these will then become their 'star' players and the next round of youth would come through! But no... lets do what the big teams want each time... screw the little guy
I suppose one way to achieve this would be to get out of the EU and we could limit the number of non-English players!
I still don't see how this is meant to improve the national team. If England are to win the World Cup then quality players need to be produced . Premier league teams don't fill their squads with foreigners because they are foreign, they fill their squads with the best available players. If the best available players were English then there would be no need to legislate for quotas. If you restrict the best players there will just be more mediocre players in the Premier League and they still wouldn't win the World Cup. Meanwhile, the grassroots will wither away.
Totally agree NZ, he's not really tackling the real issues - the first being there just aren't enough coaches, especially at youth level. They need to invest far more into this area. Even at youth level, top clubs are scouring the world and filling their academies with promising youngsters. We'll start finding ourselves more and more in the position we were in with the Januzaj guy at Man U... can we get this talented foreign kid to play for England? For me, Wage limits and non-English limits will soon improve the naitonal team.... plus maybe offer incentives to clubs to field English youngsters, but then it would only be a drop in the ocean compared to TV money!
Germany Italy and Spain all have strong leagues and have not the numbers of foreign to them players the English teams employ. Also not all the teams in the Premiership and Championship have the numbers of foreign players that Arsenal or Chelsea use. I see that trying to have better English players will inflate transfer fees between the top teams for the small number there are available and the clubs should be encouraged to have local boys in their junior and reserve teams. Whatever happens the small clubs will recieve a kick and a punch.
It's always good to read threads on these subjects on this board - well expressed points of view with a nice dollop of humour thrown in for good measure. There' so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start and, indeed, where to finish. I'll just flag up 2 concerns for now. Firstly, at the moment kids that want to play for Arsenal might choose us as a springboard. they play for us, get really good and we get the transfer fee when they join a bigger club. This trcikles down of course because players not quite good enough for us would choose a league 1 or 2 or even a conference side and they then graduateto the Championship. With the premier league teams now searching out 150 or so extra plyers for this new initiative we're all going to miss out on most of the gems and when they do eventually become available we'll have to pay the gilded few an inflated price for them. The second concern is possibly a bit more esoteric but important nonetheless. The Man United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans of this world often adopt a smaller club as their second team and go and watch them week in week out. With the advent of this new league what are the chances of a fir few of them deserting Rochdale, Barnet, Stevenage etc. to watch their B team? There's only going to be one group of winners here and the experts who dreamt this up should hang their heads in shame.
