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Premiership Football News: Aaron Ramsey

Andy Greeves on building for tomorrow

After weeks of speculation, Cardiff City's Aaron Ramsey was finally set to sign for Arsenal on Tuesday. The scramble for the 17-year olds' signature, which also involved Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton, has been one of biggest transfer stories of the summer so far. Despite the calibre of clubs chasing Ramsey, it is bizarre that so many headlines should be devoted to a player barely likely to figure in the Gunners' first team in the next few seasons.

The signing of youth players has become an increasing area of interest to the UK football media over the past five or so seasons. In a YouTube and Wikipedia saturated world, we already know everything about the best players in the biggest leagues as soon as they become hot property.

The challenge for the press is to find the next generation of football superstars is on and football clubs are only too happy to help journalists in their search. Premier League adapt a two-tiered approach to squad development. The theory is simple - buy for both for today and tomorrow. Last season a record £600m was spent by Premiership clubs on transfers and nearly 20% of that went on players aged 21 or below.

16-year old John Bostock has agreed a contract with Tottenham Hotspur and will join from Crystal Palace, subject to a transfer fee being agreed. Spurs have been notable subscribers to the buy for tomorrow motion in recent seasons. They have supplemented big money signings with recruitment of under-21 talent such as Chris Gunter, Danny Rose, Ben Alwick, Dorian Dervite and Tomas Pekhart. This policy has bared dividends of late with the likes of Aaron Lennon and Abel Taarabt breaking into the Spurs first team squad, having been initially signed as 'ones for the future'.

Tottenham found profit to be made in the recruitment of youngsters too. Teenagers Simon Davies and Matthew Etherington were bought by Spurs for a combined fee of £700k from Peterbrough United in 2000. Davies was sold for £4m to Everton five years later, Etherington was used as make weight in Tottenham's £3.5m signing of Frederic Kanoute in 2003. Reto Ziegler, Calum Davenport and Gary Doherty are other players signed by Spurs as under-21s in recent years, all sold for a profit after establishing themselves in the first-team.

The current trend, as with the recruitment of first-team players, is to buy the best youngsters abroad to avoid high transfer prices. The make up of the youth teams of Premiership sides reflects this. Ten players in Chelsea's starting line up in the FA Youth Cup final, second leg this season were foreign. They cost the Blues less than a combined price of £6m to sign. Ten of the 27 players in Arsenal's youth side (37%) were signed from overseas, while Liverpool's victorious national Reserve League this season was made up almost exclusively of non-UK talent.

The appeal for young players to move to the UK and to the Premiership is obvious. A good quality of living, plus the prospect of playing in the best league in the world makes it a no-brainer for teenagers across the globe. " You talk to any top-class young player about where they want to play and 90% say England," football agent Kia Joorabchian recently told The Daily Telegraph.

The success stories of overseas teenagers making it in the Premiership are plentiful - Ronaldo, Fabregas and John Obi Mikel were all recruited having barely finished going through puberty and have gone on to be top stars at Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea.

There's no sign the Premiership big boys are going to let up their youth recruitment policy. Arsenal to sign a five-a-side team's worth of French teenagers this summer with Clement Chantome, Francis Coquelin, Mouhamadou Dado, Samir Nasri and Blaise Matuidi all bound for the Emirates Stadium.

Manchester United will add Brazil under-17 brothers Rafael and Fabio Silva to their youth team, having agreed a fee with their club side Fluminense two years ago. Manchester United have also been linked with the France Under-16 captain Darnel Situ and Rennes 15-year old Jeremy Helen while Dutch starlets Jeffrey Bruna and Jordy Brouwer are targets for Chelsea and Liverpool respectively.

While the Premiership rubs its hands over the relative ease in which they can bolster their youth teams for next to nothing, clubs outside England not nearly as happy. French clubs in particular have been major victims of the Premier League's youth movement, losing their best players for minimal transfer fees. Marseille's Samir Nasri, a player likened to Zinedine Zidane no less, isn't expect to cost Arsenal more than £5m. This for one of the best prospects France has to offer.

In Spain, a law which prevents La Liga clubs signing players until they are 18 means many of the best young Spaniards are moving to the UK. Even the biggest clubs have lost out. Barcelona have seen stars such as Cesc Fabregas, Daniel Pacheco and Fran Merida leave the Nou Camp for the Premiership in recent years. Barcelona recently signed Gerard Pique from Manchester United for £6m, a player that had begun his playing career with Barca, until he walked out on them aged 17 to go to Old Trafford.

UEFA's recent proposals for a 'four plus four' rule could serve to fuel the current trend of the best youngsters gravitating towards the Premiership. The 'four plus four' rule would stipulate that four players fielded by every European team must have been developed by that club for three years between the ages of 15 and 21. To cover themselves, Premiership clubs would surely increase the size of their youth academies and in doing so, up the number of players they recruit from overseas.

UEFA actually believe they are designing the 'four plus four' system to decrease the number of foreign players in European leagues. The realities are that clubs, particular those in England, would simply sign their overseas players at a younger age.

Never more has the football transfer system seemed more like a food chain. The Premiership will continue to prosper as it has the clout to attract healthy prey while the future for overseas football leagues lower down the chain looks far less rosy.

Andy Greeves

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