Over-priced Englishmen
The second problem is that Premier League clubs are either reluctant to sell English players or when they do, they manage to get extremely inflated sums in transfer fees. The players also benefit from this as they can demand extremely high wages even if they don’t really deserve it. No one will forget Liverpool paying a combined £55M for Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing only for them to flop massively. Manchester United recently signed Luke Shaw for a sum believed to be around £27M. I’m not saying Shaw is a bad player, but it’s safe to say that if he wasn’t English he would cost around half of that. These inflated prices mean most clubs prefer to look abroad because the players available there are not only available for cheap but are often better than their English counterparts.
Both of these issues discussed above (coaching and the home-grown rule) are linked. Picture this: if kids are properly coached from a young age, the number of talented players available in England will gradually start increasing. With the number of promising youngsters now increasing, English clubs will not need to look abroad on a regular basis and will instead look to give their own youngsters a chance, as is the case in Spain, Germany, France and even Holland. This will in turn make the home-grown rule unnecessary (even if it is still being implemented) and the inflated prices clubs have to pay for English talent might just come down. It sounds extremely idealistic, but it isn’t impossible either.
The problems English football currently faces aren’t massively difficult to address. But they will only be addressed once people actually acknowledge that there is a problem and focus on it instead of continuing to hide behind false statements like “Too many foreigners in the Premier League is damaging English football” or “We need to give the kids a chance”. Then, and only then, will English football manage to eventually drag itself out of the rut it currently finds itself in.