Yet Another Reason For British Clubs To Spend Obscene Money

By: chris | June 24th, 2009

Most, even the Brits among us, have at one point or another decried the excessive, borderline loony, transfer fees among Premier League clubs, and particularly those for Brits. Tottenham was a nice example last year, doubling David Bentley’s value overnight before loaning Robbie Keane to Rafa & Co. for six months, netting a free £5m.

Well good news for the financially conscious: it’s back and it’s only going to get worse – at least according to Rafa.

You may have heard Liverpool – excuse me…cash strapped Liverpool – recently paid £17m for one Glen Johnson, rightback formerly of Portsmouth. Mr. Glen Johnson, fine chap though he may be, is not worth £17m. A statement with which Rafa seems to agree and which leads to an indication that Premiership spending in certain areas may just get a bit worse:

“Sometimes you have to spend a little bit more,” said Benitez. “You can’t compete in the top four of the Premier League unless you spend some money.

“We were looking for a player of quality and also somebody who is British because of the new Champions League rules. Glen Johnson fits both categories.”

As it stands we’ll have to take Rafa’s word for it, because upon thorough perusal of the uefa website, including the eligibility requirements, nothing has yet been announced outside of the competition format change, which occurred a long, long time ago.

If you’re desperate for legal speak, fast forward to page 28 of this lovely PDF and check out the “Conditions for Registration: List A”. However, they’re still citing the UEFA Cup and Intertoto Cups in that little brochure, neither of which still exist. Slight problem, that.

So long story short, it seems more association-trained (came up through the youth ranks of a club within the same country, in this case West Ham) players will be required. A very simple way of saying “we want 6+5″ in the short term, and a very simple way of increasing child poaching from abroad in the long term.

And if the number of locally-trained/association-trained players is increased, this means British players may have a higher price stamped on their heads as the Big Four go looking for reinforcements. Which means if your club, say Wigan, has a player Chelsea would like who is British, they can hold out for a bit more now because the Blues now have another need for him.

In layman’s terms: David Bentley & Glen Johnson might just have become bargains. So it would behoove you to put down the coffee and remove from sharp objects when reading the morning’s transfer news from now forward.

But in better news, the Champions League is already upon us. The draw for the first two rounds (now of four) of the new format was held yesterday, which looks a bit something like this: