Do clubs really consider where they send their loan players?
It’s easy to make the decision to send a player out on loan. There could be many reasons — if they’re out of favour, if they need minutes, if they’re looking to move on. All legitimate reasons of one reason or another.
What about sending your best academy graduate out on loan? How much thought actually goes into it?
Having had the pleasure of watching a serious amount of Premier League 2 football this year, my attention is firmly on some of the best young talent in the country. Although I’m no longer at a club, I’m keen to track the players who stood out to me, and to be fair there are four or five players who have got loan moves.
It led me to questioning do clubs actually think about the full picture when sending players out on loan?
There has never been a more important time to develop young talented footballers following the GBE Brexit rules. We’ll soon see more and more home grown players coming through academies and into the first team environment., which is great.
Combine the above with the new FIFA loan rules which will limit clubs to six loan exits per season, to stop clubs from stockpiling players. This now means we’ll have more U23s leaving the top category 1 academies such as Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal to go in search of football elsewhere.
We’ve already started to see the likes of Southampton picking up Tino Livramento and Kyle Walker-Peters. Brighton picking up Tariq Lamptey, and Leeds signing Lewis Bate. This is a viable way of getting elite youth players in, and will continue to be an important route for players following the new FIFA rules.
The topic of signing U23s from elite academies feels like it could be a newsletter topic on it’s own — one for another time perhaps.
When these signings happen, the majority of them won’t be ready for the first team. So getting their development pathway mapped out is important, and deciding where to send them on loan is a big part.
One player I really like is Dynel Simeu. He’s a modern day centre half in every sense of the word — big, mobile, progresses the ball. There’s a lot to like. Southampton signed him from Chelsea for a reported £1.5m in the summer of 2021. After impressing during the first half of the season in the PL2, he’s now been sent to Carlisle United on loan. They sit 22nd in League Two. Which feels like a particularly difficult gig for your first experience of senior football. Especially when you look at the situation Carlisle are in and the fact they’re not particularly similar to Southampton in regards to style of play.
It’s worth noting that first loan moves don’t tend to be as important as the second loan move. You would imagine that the first move is about getting first team experience, feeling what it’s like to play senior minutes, seeing what it’s like in training day in and day out.
Now I’m not saying Southampton didn’t do their homework on sending Simeu up North. They’re a smart club and I’m sure they do their due diligence. However, I’m sure there will be a lot of clubs out there who don’t — part of that might be there is only one club in for them, so you have to send them there for first team experience. But then you need to weigh it up. What’s more important? A suboptimal loan with incorrect development environment or playing with the U23s?
Another example is Jack Clarke, Spurs signed him in July, 2019 for a sizeable fee. Since then he’s had loans at Leeds Utd, QPR, Stoke City and now Sunderland. All completely different clubs, with different systems.
You have to ask the question, are Spurs seriously developing Clarke properly? Be that preparing him to get experience to get into the first team, or preparing him for his future career to sell him on. I don’t think so personally.
Football clubs in general need to get a better view of where they’re sending their players. Are you data profiling clubs stylistically to see where is best for the player’s development? Are you looking to send the player somewhere to challenge an area of their game? Are you sending a player to a club that will give them the best chances of success? (of course that depends what you think success looks like).
We’re seeing more roles in football such as “loans manager” and “head of player development”. The need to have people in specific roles like these shows how big the task is to look after player development.
Loan moves can be difficult though, especially for younger players, some of them work, some of them don’t. But as a football club you’ve got to look at the bigger picture and give them the best chance of success.
Hopefully you enjoyed my rambling. I feel we’ve got another newsletter topic in “signing U23s from elite academies”. I’ll look to write something on this in the near future.
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