Helping yourself by helping others – Why loaning out young players now, helps later

Friends, Romans, Football Managers lend me your ears.  Or your midfielders, defenders or strikers, depending on what I need.

Oh transfer time when some teams will opt to shell out big money to push for promotion, avoid relegation or to get them through an injury riddled season.  The money that will be spent and wasted, the players that will move up or down the M1, it’s a much more interesting time for me than the summer transfer window.  The reason being is that rarely do club use the most valuable tool at their disposal, and those that do benefit.  That tool is the loan spell.

Now the loan spell makes the most sense for teams with younger players they are looking to develop, rather than teams (Manchester City in particular) trying to dump training ground tyrants on desperate teams needing help.

Ever heard how Josh McEachran is an up and coming England striker?  Ever seen him start a meaningful game for Chelsea?  Now having never seen McEachran play a game, I would like to believe the more experienced football writers in that he does have a lot of potential and may even be a future England #9.  But I do not see how he will progress behind a striker backlog with the Blues, so how does he get better by playing meaningful games?  Have him finish the rest of the football season playing first team football.  It technically doesn’t have to be a Premier League cellar dweller, but even a promotional hopeful in the Championship.

Heard the name Robbie Brady?  Well he is a winger at Manchester United who has spent the first half of season playing at Hull City,  and United decided to extend his loan until the end of the season.  Now Brady may not even crack the Manchester United starting XI next year but who is to say Sir Alex won’t see any progress out of the young midfielder next season, especially with United’s woes in midfield this year.

Maybe Robbie Brady is a little obscure and farsighted, so I’ll use a couple more recent examples.

In the 2009/10 Premier League season Bolton Wanderers new coach Owen Coyle took on a young 18 year old midfielder who was looking for more first team football and was given that at the Reebok.  This midfielder made 13 appearances and scored his first ever Premier League goal while there.  That midfielder was Jack Wilshere, whom you hear constantly being talked about as the backbone of England’s midfield for not only Euro 2012 but for years to come.

Owen Coyle’s loan success does not only rest on the shoulders of Jack Wilshere.  Coyle also took underused Chelsea striker Daniel Sturridge last season in January.  The reward?  Sturridge only scored 8 goals in 11 appearances for Bolton and is now Chelsea’s leading goal scorer and has scored more Premier League goals than any other Blues striker since January last year.

England are potentially in a jam this summer at Euro 2012 with Wayne Rooney’s two match suspension, so Fabio Capello is going to need to call on strikers to step up and fill that void.  He may just decide to call on Rooney’s Manchester United teammate Danny Welbeck.  Where did Welbeck spend last season?  Not at Old Trafford, but at The Stadium of Light.   Twenty-six appearances and six goals later, Welbeck is now a fairly regular starter for United and a striker I would like to see England take this summer.

One could also wonder how Andy Carroll’s form might be this season if he had stayed at Newcastle for all of last season, or even being loaned out at the beginning of this season rather than floundering on the bench at Liverpool and not playing meaningful minutes.