The changes to the loan system, how they relate to the under 23s, and how the Telegraph said “no”.

By Tony Attwood

You can be forgiven for either a) not knowing that the player loan system has changed or will change, or b) thinking it has all been by-passed by a crafty FA outsmarting Fifa.

But new regulations there are, and as far as I can see the story that England would not be implementing them having found a loophole in the rules was yet another invention by the sports reporters of the Daily Telegraph.

In essence Fifa announced that it was scrapping the emergency loan system which had been used by clubs (predominantly in England) to sign players on contracts ranging between 28 and 93 days in two periods outside of the regular transfer windows.

The original notion of the arrangement – the “emergency” part – had long since been ignored by Football League clubs, and they were openly using it to take players on loan outside the transfer windows.  Indeed such was the abuse that as I’ll show below, when QPR used the system to bring in players to help in their push to promotion, this was praised as clever tactics.

Although to be fair many teams in the lower leagues are operating on tiny squads and vanishing overdrafts so emergency loans when injury and suspension hit them, was a clever idea and they might have greater problems now they have gone.  Certainly the FA and FL have, for several years, been doing everything they can to stop the changes that now are being implemented.

Under the new rules clubs can still sign a goalkeeper on a seven-day ‘emergency loan’ basis if they do not have a senior goalkeeper that has made five first-team appearances.  They can also recall a keeper on 24 hours notice where the keeper is loan at another club if they are unable to field two fit goalkeepers in their 18-man matchday squad.

Also any player who is registered as being on a standard loan may play non-first team football for his parent club during the term of his loan period.   Which is interesting when we see the ending of the under 21 league and the invention of Premier League 2.

Indeed the move away from an under 21 league is linked to this in that many clubs argued that the standard of under-21 football is not enough to help develop the youngsters in the club, and so a new harder league was required.

This of course is contrary to the view of Arsene Wenger who must be the most successful manager in English football at bringing through young talent.  He has moved across to a system in which the very best talents (Iwobi, Adelaide for example) don’t go on loan at all, and work with the Arsenal team to develop their abilities).

But to be clear – the regular loan system, negotiated in the transfer windows – is still available.  But the concern is that just as smaller clubs won’t be able to find a loan player to help them out during the season, so the larger clubs won’t be able to recall loan players.  Liverpool, for example, which has a catastrophic injury record has used the emergency recall when they simply can’t cope with what they have any more. Jurgen Klopp for example recalled , Tiago Ilori, Kevin Stewart, Ryan Kent, Sheyi Ojo and Danny Ward in the face of an injury crisis.

Although to be fair to Klopp he has said that he prefers the Wenger system of young players staying at their own club to be developed there.

So part of the response to this change is the under 23 league (Premier 2) as we have seen in the last article.  Fewer players will go out on loan because of the end of the emergency system, it is argued, and therefore they need more competitive match day experience, hence the new league.

It was also as an attempt to overcome these problems that plans for “B” teams to be put into the Football League trophy were announced, although immediately a number of Premier League teams pulled out of that scheme.  16 Academy sides did enter in the end, including Chelsea, Everton, Leicester, Southampton, Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, WBA, and State Aid Utd.

The problem also isn’t one that particularly affects other countries where the big teams have a B club playing in the second or third division of the league and so offering competitive games to older reserve players.

So all that seems clear, except that Ben Rumsby at the Daily Telegraph suggested otherwise.  Oddly his on line profile and job title for the paper can’t be accessed but I believe he was their “sports news correspondent” and he is still writing Olympic reports for the paper.

So I think the great triumph of the FA described by Ben Rumsby and published in the Telegraph really just reiterated minor rules that were already there, and won’t make any difference.

But it was because of these changes that the under 21 competition became the under 23 competition, so that clubs can recall loaned players to play in the under 23 competition, and to allow for the fact that they will have more 22 and 23 year olds who will not be going out on loan, but need some competitive game time.

• Coming soon to a ground near you – Premier League 2
• Why so much hate and angst about Arsenal? We’ve found the answer.
• Viking FK 0 Arsenal Lots. Time for the anti-Arsenal to say you can’t judge anything from friendlies.

Anniversaries of the day (all the anniversaries for each day are on the home page)

• 7 August 1982: Tony Adams first appearance in friendly away to Colchester.  He had signed as a schoolboy and played his first league game on 5 November 1983 and went on to become Mr Arsenal.
• 7 August 1999: Thierry Henry’s first appearance – as a sub in Arsenal 2 Leicester City 1 on the opening day of the season.  He had scored 3 goals in 16 for Juventus, and 20 in 105 for Monaco and did not consider himself a natural goalscorer.