FA Chairman, Greg Dyke, has released radical proposals to the structure of the English game designed to help improve the state of the English national side, and the changes have gone down like the proverbial lead balloon.
Who is the most ridiculed man in British football right now?
Greg Dyke perhaps?
The FA has released the findings of the “FA Chairman’s England Commission” and fans of the British game are in uproar over the proposals designed to help improve the fortunes of the English national side.
Dyke and his commission have been investigating why the number of English players in the Premier League and the Championship were falling, and its believed they canvassed the opinion of 650 footballing minds before the final release of the report.
The commission included the English national manager Roy Hodgson, the Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand, the former Leeds and England full back Danny Mills, and the Chesterfield player Richie Humphreys.
The world’s biggest sports radio station talkSPORT covered the story most of the day and the feedback on the proposals was 100% negative. Dyke himself went onto the show to defend his report and got a roasting from the hosts of Drive: Adrian Durham and Darren Gough.
The main source of angst stemmed from Dyke’s proposals to create a new League Three that would exist between the current League Two and the Conference and consist of a series of Premier League B sides and teams from the Conference.
Dyke suggested that Man City, Man Utd and Spurs had already thrown their backing behind the idea, but Durham told the FA Chief that Twitter was awash with complaints from lower league chairman who were vehemently opposed to the idea.
The plans would ensure that each B side would contain at least 15 English players, and teams could be promoted or relegated, but not higher than League One, and they would not be allowed to enter the FA Cup.
The report also opened the way for Premier League sides, who did not want to create a B side, to create ‘Strategic Loan Partnerships (SLP)’ with teams from beneath the Championship, that would see their best young players farmed out on a more hands on loan system.
“At the moment the progression is too big a jump to get into a Premier League first team. If we don’t do something about it we’re going to end up with very few English players playing in the Premier League.” Dyke told talkSPORT.
The number of English players in the top four clubs this season is down to 23%, from 29% last year. Dyke says this is fearfully low, but the talkSPORT hosts failed to see how these changes were going to positively affect the performance of the English national side.
One part of the report that is a great idea, if implemented correctly, is the plan to stop ‘mediocre players’ from outside of the European Union obtaining Home Office work permits to take the jobs of young English players.
The commission believes that restricting the number of foreigners would give more opportunities to the young English players to show what they can do.
TalkSPORT host, Darren Gough, told Dyke that they were not focusing on the real core of the problem, before pointing to the fact that Premier League managers were working under so much fear of the sack that it is highly unlikely that they would give English youngsters the chances they deserve.
Adrian Durham told Dyke that the proposals were ‘silly’ and Dyke reacted by saying the proposals closely modeled the formations off the leagues in Spain and Germany, the two most successful European national sides in recent years.
