Elite Player Performance Plan in Football (EPPP)

On the 20^th October 2011, The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) was successfully introduced to the Football League, receiving a majority 46 votes from the 72 Football League managers.  Almost everybody related to the Football League has labelled this as “the end of the Football League as we know it” or “destroying the lower leagues”, but who really knows what the outcome of this will be?

As many of you will know, the Premier League have enforced the rulings so that the best young English talent can be purchased for a far cheaper fee than previous, with the aim to improve the amount of elite English footballers playing in the top-flight.  Furthermore, The Premier League were reported to have told the remaining seventy-two Football League clubs that if they did not agree to the proposed changes, the annual funding provided to them (approximately £5.4m across four years) would be cut, or even abolished.  Meaning that there was little a club in League One or League Two could realistically do, with finances for many of these clubs already extremely insecure.

I’m sure many of you have seen the facts surrounding the amount of money Premier League clubs will have to pay to land a lower league starlet and I want to discuss whether this plan is really going to benefit the nation.

Firstly, The Premier League wants to develop the youth of England and they plan to do this by persuading top clubs to increase their youth recruitment from England, instead of looking to sign players from abroad for a far cheaper sum – but is this really going to change the development of the youth players?  I personally believe that the introduction of a rule where there must be a minimum of five home-grown players in a Premier League team’s starting line-up would be far more beneficial.  If these players are going to become “elite”, then surely they need to be playing at an elite level, as opposed to gaining their experience through being loaned to teams at a lower level.  Maybe five would be too much at first, but I believe that would be a far better route.

The introduction of the plan also saw the lifting of the “90 minute law” – where a team could only sign a youth player if the travelling distance to the club was 90 minutes or less.  I believe this will be a logical improvement, mostly due to the fact that a team such as Newcastle have part of their catchment area based in the North Sea.

It has been said that the plan will provide a much more constant cash flow for lower league football clubs and this could well be a positive with many clubs struggling with the day-to-day running costs.  However, it will also cut down a potential mass income through creating a raw talent and selling on for a high transfer fee, such as Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain this summer for £12m.  This can obviously create a whole host of opportunities for a club, but will lower league clubs want to continue investing in youth systems if they aren’t going to achieve these big sums, even if they may be once in a blue moon for most?  Not to mention the potential of developing players who turn into instrumental first-team players – how will clubs replace these players in future if there is a lack of internal investment in youth players?

Everyone is likely to have different views on this matter.  Fans of Premier League outfits are likely to see this as a positive move and fans of the remaining seventy-two clubs will probably see this as having a negative impact.  Personally, I feel that the plan has a lot of potential but has an awful amount of flaws.  I do not believe the plan in its current state will be able to change the amount of “elite” English footballers coming through English football.  Teams in the Premiership will continue to purchase cheaper foreign players who have a marginally better skill level than the youngsters and this will continue to cut out opportunities for youth players to gain experience at an “elite level”.  I feel the only way this can be enforced is the introduction of the rule I mentioned earlier, with a minimum of five home-grown English players in the match-day squad.  Unless there are changes made to this plan, I feel we could see a far wider gap developing between the top division and the lower leagues – which would be a real shame, considering England has always boasted one of the most competitive Football League structures in the world.

@Rich__Norton

League Two – Round up so far

We are now fourteen games into the League Two season and many feel we should be starting to get a feel for what each individual teams aims will now be for the season.  Personally, I disagree and always find myself reluctant to make such a comment until each side has faced eachother once, however, I believe there are some anomalies already!

Firstly, many anticipated that Crawley Town would runaway with the League Two title and to be honest, I was one of them.  Having seen them play twice this season already, I don’t believe they are as strong as most people first thought and this was potentially proven by Morecambe who annihilated them 6-0 followed by a 3-0 home defeat to Swindon.  Having said that, they have bounced back immediately with six straight wins and placed themselves on top of the pile.  Who knows what extra cash they will be able to get their hands on should they feel they need to improve their squad further?

Crawley are being closely followed by Southend United who finally appear to have found their feet in the division after a some what inconsistent start to the season.  Southend are currently on an unbeaten run of seven league games, including six wins.  They have made some very impressive signings this season including Liam Dickinson, JP Kalala and Neil Harris; They also have a young striker on trial currently, called Yannick Boli, who played for PSG as well as previously being linked with Real Madrid – potentially an exciting prospect for League Two on a cold Tuesday night!

As for the rest of the automatic promotion and playoff places, the only teams which not many would have expected to be there are Morecambe and Cheltenham.  Morecambe have been extremely good on the road and most teams have found them difficult to break down.  Cheltenham have some what crept into the automatic positions currently and certainly deserve to be there.  In my opinion, I feel these teams will start to fall down the table in time and will eventually finish in a respectable mid-table position.  I also believe that Swindon and Port Vale will grab a playoff spot and Gillingham will fill the remaining automatic promotion spot.

In terms of relegation, I think it could be tight this year.  We currently have Plymouth stuck at the bottom of the table and in numerous off-the-field issues and in serious fear of their existence – who knows what a consecutive relegation could do to the club.  Barnet also find themselves in the relegation zone, despite having one of the tastiest attacks in the league, I fancy them to find enough to steer away from relegation and stay up.  Accrington Stanley have had a terrible time on the road this season, but have been so reliant on their home form in recent years that they should have enough about them.  I personally fear for Hereford, I saw them play away earlier in the season and really felt that they will struggle this season and I believe this may be their year to go down.

Like I said at the beginning, I really do not believe you can fully judge a team’s expectations until the 23^rd game of the season, so let’s see what happens in the next nine games!

@Rich__Norton