Memorandum from the League Managers Association
(WP 3)
1. The League Managers Association firmly
believes that the introduction to this country of a small number
of high quality overseas players has enhanced and strengthened
the appeal of football in the eyes of spectators and helped improve
standards of play.
2. The initial influx followed the Bosman
ruling, which meant that managers in this country were able to
enter a market hitherto prohibited to them because of the high
transfer fees. The ruling freeing players at the end of their
contracts plus the vastly increased revenues from television have
enabled clubs to meet the wage demands of the top players from
the European Community countries and, indeed those outside the
EC who meet the Department of Employment criteria for work permits.
3. However, this has had a down side. It
has pushed up the price for domestic players, so that revenue
that hitherto circulated within the game in this country and helped
sustain professional clubs below the Premier League is now percolating
abroad. Indeed, a manager in this country is not going to pay
an English club, say £4 million, for a player when he can
go abroad and obtain a player of possibly equal ability for nothing.
4. This trend has brought to this country
players who have not necessarily improved the standards and who
in turn are stifling the development of young English players.
5. The spiral in wages has also had a serious
knock-on effect on the domestic game. Players imported from Europe
are being paid higher wages because no transfer fees are involved
and English players are naturally seeking pay-packet parity. This,
in turn, has led to clubs offering players longer contracts to
ensure some kind of insurance against players leaving when a short-term
contract expires.
6. Longer contracts, however, have produced
a further problem. An increasing number of players are seeking
to move in mid-contract and some of them create difficulties for
their managers and their clubs when those moves are denied, as
in the case of Pierre Van Hooijdonk at Nottingham Forest and Nicholas
Aneilka at Arsenal. It is our belief that in many instances this
"destabilising" of a player is encouraged by agents
who are seeking to get better deals for their players elsewhere
with the rewards that brings for themselves.
7. This trend is particularly worrying for
managers who work on a long-term strategy for the building of
their sides. How can they make these plans when they are unsure
that players they have on long-term contracts then break them
with impunity?
8. The general move towards signing foreign
players (on Day One this season 59 per cent of the players who
kicked off in the Premier League were from overseas) is discouraging
English clubs from investing in the development of young players.
What is the point in spending millions on a youth policy if the
young players are not able to force their way into the club's
senior side and have to seek football careers elsewhere, often
at a lower level?
9. Chelsea provides a good example of this
trend. They have produced a catalogue of young players who have
been moved on because their places have been taken by overseas
players and even the most outstanding of them, England Under 21
international Jody Morris is unable to hold down the first-team
place he had last season following the arrival at the club of
the French World Cup star Didier Deschamps.
10. Deschamps was one of the 46 foreign
players signed by the Premier League clubs during the 11 week
close season in 1999 at a cost of £76 million. During that
same period only five players were signed by Premier League clubs
from the Second and Third Nationwide Divisions, at a cost of £1.4
million. Worse, throughout the 1998-99 season not one player from
the Third Division was sold to a Premier League club who, between
them, preferred to spend over £100 million on foreign players.
11. The days when young players could be
brought from lower divisions and developed at a bigger club as
Liverpool did so successfully with players like Emlyn Hughes,
Kevin Keegan and Ian Rush seem to be over, removing the incentive
of managers in lower divisions to develop good young players.
12. This is our national game and our national
team is suffering from the import of players from abroad. Kevin
Keegan only last week suggested that his pool of possible international
standard players is now between 30-35 whereas 10 years ago that
might have been as high as 60 to 70. This statistic demonstrates
that there are valid grounds for the government to make changes
in labour legislation as it relates to professional sport.
13. All interested parties recognise the
importance of a successful National Team to the well-being of
the sport. In addition, and more important, do we all (including
government) not have a prime responsibility to protect and nurture
the youth of this country? The LMA believes the great influx of
overseas players is not conducive to these ends. Also, that the
full impact of the current policy has not yet been felt (if may
be that a comparison should be drawn from the effects previous
policies have had on the England cricket team).
14. The Football Assocation and the Government
must be the guardians of the national game—the pinnacle
of which is the England Team.
League Managers Association
September 1999
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