da bwin： Amid an age in which the Premier League’s top clubs spend unimaginable fortunes on nurturing and developing academy players, the Football League has arguably produced English football’s biggest success stories in recent years.
da pinnacle： Tottenham Hotspur’s Dele Alli, who acclimatised to the top flight with incredible ease after being plucked from League One’s MK Dons, remains the most obvious instance, but there are other examples too, not least including Leicester City title-winner Jamie Vardy and a £50million defender in John Stones. In fact, excluding loans, eight members of England’s Euro 2016 squad began their careers in the Football League or lower.
A decade prior when the Three Lions travelled to the 2006 World Cup, that number was just three – David James, Jermain Jenas and Theo Walcott, none of whom actually kicked a ball in Germany. Likewise, England’s Euro squad last summer even included two former non-league players, the previously mentioned Vardy and centre-back Chris Smalling.
As promising young talent at the Premier League’s biggest clubs are given everything they could ever want – fancy cars, super-star wages and all the trimmings – those who’ve had to fight their way to the top of the game, clawing themselves upwards from the depths of English football with dogged performance after dogged performance, are having an equal if not bigger impact on the national team and the top tier.
Whilst academy products are being sanitised and mollycoddled, often lacking the passion and intensity which defines English football, players like Vardy and Alli have taken the aggression and determination needed to survive in the often-attritional, 46-game Football League and transformed it into unique strengths.
Whether there should be that level of mobility in the English game or whether the sudden influx of Football League players within the national team is simply an indictment on how spectacularly top clubs are failing to bring academy talent through to senior level remains a separate debate. But at this moment in time, it’s clear that the Championship, League One and League Two and divisions yonder have a lot to offer Premier League clubs, provided you know where to look.
Yet, in the transfer market, it’s the Football League that is being left behind by the unprecedented level of finance available to Premier League clubs. Not so much economically; although some of the Football League’s fallen giants are struggling to balance the books, we saw Everton spend a record sum on a League One player, £11million signing Ademola Lookman, in January, while Middlesbrough and Wolves alone have spent nearly £65million between them already this summer. Although he division’s overall spend is just 15% of the top flight so far this summer, the money is slowly but surely trickling down.
The real concern, however, is the level of talent moving the other way – a path that has seemed to dry up in recent years. The number of players signed from Football League clubs (excluding those relegated from the Premier League the season previous) dropped from 31 throughout the 2014/15 season to just 13 last season. Likewise, the number signed with no Premier League experience reduced by almost 75% in that time, and despite an initial rise the year prior, just one Football League player joined a top six club last season – Arsenal defender Rob Holding.
So far this summer, meanwhile, it’s been mixed news for Football League players looking to make their way to the top flight. There have been almost as many players signed from the Football League as the whole of last season, with three weeks of the summer transfer window still to go, and more players signed with no prior Premier League experience. Considering January has proved almost as popular as the summer in acquiring Football League talent in recent years – curiously, John Stones and Dele Alli were both signed mid-season (although the latter was loaned back until the summer) – we should see last term’s numbers eclipsed by the end of the season.
But the overriding concern is how far up the league these players are now travelling. We’re yet to see a single Football League player move to a top six club this summer and the average league position they’re moving to (based on final standings the season previous) has dropped from 13th in 2015/16 to 17th this summer. In fact, Connor Mahoney’s switch to Bournemouth represents the only transfer involving a top-half club thus far, whilst five of the ten have signed for clubs just promoted from the Championship.
Of course, there is still nearly half of the summer and the whole of January to go, but business thus far suggests the incredible rises of Vardy, Stones and Alli from varying sections of the lower tiers haven’t inspired the Premier League’s top clubs to take a chance on Football League talent. And the incredible irony amid a summer in which the Premier League has already surpassed the £1billion mark spending around 80% on foreign players, the largest fee ever paid for a Championship player (excluding those just relegated), is the £13.5million Red Bull Leipzig paid for Oliver Burke last summer. A modest amount compared to what Manchester United have spent on Victor Lindelof, for example.
The Football League is overflowing with cheap, promising talents prepared to run themselves into the ground to make it to the top. But rather than giving them the opportunities they so desperately crave, the Premier League continues to be obsessed with foreign talent that no longer provides the value-for-money it once guaranteed.