Going It A-Loan

Watching the Arsenal v Sunderland game yesterday I was reflecting on what is perhaps one of the biggest changes in football over the last few years.

It came when I realised that Sunderland’s new player Nicklas Bendtner wasn’t on the pitch because he was unable to play against his “parent club.” The Danish forward went to The Black Cats on deadline day, but he only went on the type of temporary transfer that is becoming increasingly common these days.

Everywhere you look there is a player on a Season Long Loan, or an Emergency Loan, or a Youth Loan, a Loan “with a view to a permanent move,” or some other type of contract. There must be players that forget what team that they actually play for!

Take, for example, Ibrahima Sonko. He was signed by Stoke in 2008 for £2m but quickly fell out of favour. He spent the 2009/10 season on loan at Hull – who tried to send him back to Stoke after things went sour there, but Stoke refused to take him back. The 2010/11 campaign was no happier for the Senegal international, he was shipped out to Portsmouth – guess what – on a loan deal, but they had so many loan players that he fell foul of the maximum allowed in a match day squad (five) that often he was out of the side.

At the end of the last season he was released by Stoke and was signed by Ipswich, where his is rebuilding his career – ironically enough alongside Danny Collins, who is on loan to the Tractor Boys from The Potters. But he had effectively been in limbo for two years – when in the old days he would have moved on a permanent deal and he could have planned for his future.

There is only one side in the Championship at the moment without a loan player – Coventry City – and it’s easy to see why it is an attractive option for teams at that level from a business point of view. You are signing a proven quality player – or an ambitious youngster – and if the gamble doesn’t pay off then you can send him back without it having cost you too much – but it is the view of Soccerbusiness that it is getting a touch out of hand.

We are not far from the stage – and anyone who has played 5 a side football will recognise this – where a player might not know the name of his team mates! Ok that might be extreme, but there are players on loan from Premier League clubs who have made over 150 appearances in the football league and never represented the actual club they are contracted too.

Much of the fault lies with the big Premier League Clubs. They have either accrued so many players that they can’t fit them all into their 25 man squads – witness Craig Bellamy being “on loan” at Liverpool. Or their youngsters can’t get a game because their teams are choc full of internationals.

Of course youngsters have benefitted from loan spells since the system began. Former Arsenal and England player Steve Bould won leagues and cups, but always said that none of that would have happened if he hadn’t gone to Torquay in the early 80s for a couple of months, and that must surely continue to happen. But the situation as it is now isn’t helping anyone, not the clubs – who get no long term stability with players changing every month in some cases – not the fans and above all not the players themselves.

In Praise Of Footballers (No, Honestly!)

At Soccerbusiness we have been reflecting yet again this week on the actions of footballers besmirching our great game.

I refer of course to Carlos Tevez’s actions (or literally his in-action) last week when he refused to come on as a sub in the Manchester City game with Bayern Munich.

It is not hard to see Tevez as typical of all footballers. Overpaid, underskilled, pampered, morally bankrupt, emotionally detached, or as Graeme Souness put it: “The embodiment of everything people think of modern footballers.”

But the truth is I’ll bet you somewhat less clear. I’ll bet you that Tevez’s team mates are just as disgusted with him as the fans were.

Top sportsmen, we are told, just want to play, “[insert name here] would want to beat his Nan at tiddlywinks” and all the other clichés, and that still holds true, despite what the media would have believe in the wake of Tevez-gate.

Of course they get paid too much, but if someone wanted to give me more money than I was worth then I wouldn’t turn it down. Yes they’ve got big houses, but deal with it. So have other people with money – and lets be honest, the only time we, as fans, care about how much a player gets paid is when they do something to upset us “[insert name here] I could do better than that for 50p a week never mind £50 grand” as blokes behind me often shout. Never does the subject of money come up when we have won.

Which perhaps says more about football fans than the players, but it also does tell us something instructive. There is still a sort of contract between fans and players, along the lines of “look, we know you are only here for the money, we know when you say we are the best fans in the world you don’t mean it, when you kiss the badge you are being insincere, but at least you could try!”

And that, when you boil it down was the line that Tevez crossed over last week. And that’s why the Manchester City fans who made their feelings so clear at Ewood Park on Saturday were so angry. They don’t really care that Tevez is on (allegedly) £240,000 a week, but they do expect him to earn his money.

The other strand of the “footballers are all deluded” argument that I find hard to stomach is that all footballers are the same. Patently obviously they are not. The Premier League footballers of the front and back pages are not representative of the entire sport, in fact, they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of the sport.

There are hundreds of thousands of footballers at all levels, including, of course the 5 and 6 a side players we deal with, the part-time non league players, the Sunday Morning players who just play for fun – they are all footballers. And they probably dislike Tevez as much as anyone.

So to use another old cliché. Don’t let one bad apple spoil the whole bad bunch.