Birmingham City rarely used ‘club developed players’ during their League One title-winning season under Chris Davies
Birmingham City are still benefitting from the sales of Jude (left) and Jobe Bellingham.
On the face of it, the EFL’s ‘club developed player’ rule poses a problem for Birmingham City – but scratch beneath the surface and it’s been made irrelevant.
Blues are a club with a long history of promoting from within. Butland, Redmond, Gray, Bellingham (x2), Hall and James have all earned the chant ‘one of our own’ in recent years at St Andrew’s.
Naming a club developed player in their EFL squad list or even a matchday squad, as per the rules, has never been a problem – until now.
Chris Davies only named a club developed player in a Blues squad for a League One match four times last season. Brandon Khela was a substitute versus Reading, Wycombe and Barnsley, and Bradley Mayo featured on the bench at Bolton.
No club developed player – ‘a player who has been registered with the relevant club for a minimum of 12 months prior to the end of his Under 19 Season’ – made the squad Blues registered with the EFL at the end of each transfer window either.
That was despite the rules stating: “Each club shall be required to nominate at least one Club Developed Player on either the Squad List, or on the Team Sheet for all League matches (including Play Off matches).”
The punishment for not abiding by that rule is a reduced number of substitutes. But Davies need not worry about punishments and he will always be able to name nine substitutes for Championship games irrespective of whether he utilises a club developed player.
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Why? Well, there is a way to render the whole thing pointless.
If you read the small print on the EFL regulations, by transferring two or more club developed players to a club in a league that is the same level or higher prior to the date of the applicable league fixture, an exemption is made.
Better still, the club is exempt until those players turn 24. That means Jordan James, who transferred to Rennes last summer, Jobe Bellingham and even Jude Bellingham count towards Blues’ total.
Romelle Donovan, 18, recently completed a transfer to Premier League club Brentford and Blues will be able to use that deal to get around this rule for the next six seasons.
That’s not to say that Blues don’t want to give homegrown youngsters a chance. Their recently upgraded Category One academy will be leaned on in the coming years but the trajectory of the first team means it’s difficult for players to break through at present.
The fact of the matter is that very few EFL academies, if any, have produced better quality footballers than Blues in the past decade.
And that means they have met the ‘club developed player’ requirements – even if we are no longer seeing them in Blues’ own first team.
Do Blues need to prioritise blooding their own youngsters again? Have your say HERE