Sepp Blatter's Six-plus-Five Rule

There has been a nationwide furore surrounding the recent developments with Sepp Blatter's Six-plus-Five Rule. Blatter's vision is for football teams to compete with a minimum of six domestic players, or put another way, a maximum of five foreign players.

I'm not sure what Arsene Wenger's latest excuse for not picking English players is, but needless to say Arsenal are not fans of the plan, and understandably so. If this rule was implemented tomorrow, only Manchester United (with Ben Foster, Gary Neville, Wes Brown, Rio Ferdinand, Darren Fletcher, Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick, Owen Hargreaves, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney) from the big four would mange to comply to the rule throughout the season.

At the moment, the demand for English talent is not high, where a club can happily purchase players from abroad to do the same role. For example, Michael Carrick went to Manchester United for an exaggerated £18 million. Spurs replaced Michael Carrick with Didier Zokora for only £6 million (though quite unsuccessfully). Imagine if every team needed a minimum of six English players, suddenly the demand for quality English players would increase, but the supply (in the short term) would remain the same. Michael Carrick's value would suddenly double. Is the result that only the big four can afford to fulfil the criteria with quality English players? Will the big four pull even further away? I believe not.

If, and hopefully when, the rule comes into effect, players like David Bentley, Micah Richards, Ashley Young, Gareth Barry will not be moving to the big four in exaggerated inflated £30 million transfers... they will become priceless, irreplaceable, thus, increasing competition in The Premiership, and taking that 'big four' mentality away. Emphasis will be on developing talent again, rather than buying it.

The big four, as with most of the Premiership, has not been naive in this rule coming about. There are state-of-the-art Youth Academies all over the country, developing the next generation of English footballers. At whatever point this rule or a similar rule comes about, the top clubs will be prepared for it... but that's not to say they would not rather delay the inevitable.

As for the foreigner aspect... the general football fan should not fear that the Premiership will lose out on its exciting world class foreign imports. Being able to field five foreign players is still more than enough to allow Torres, Fabregas, Ronaldo and Berbatov to excite the crowds... but the rule may grossly affect how some clubs make their purchases. The lottery system of buying many foreign players and hoping that a few make it will be over, so there will be no more Andreas Anderssons, Antony Le-Tallacs, Florent Sinama-Pongolles, Marco Boogers, Raymond Vegas, Remi Gardes, Gilles Grimandis, Christopher Wrehs, Igor Stepanovs, Pascal Cygans, Sean Dundees, Bruno Cheyrous, Eric Djemba-Djembas, Quinton Fortunes, Ibrahim Bas, Paulo Tramezzanis, Djimi Traores, Michele Padovanos, Andrea Silenzis, Temuri Ketsbaias, Bosko Balabans...

"This is probably the most contentious issue to hit English football since the Premier League was set up in 1992," David Dein.

Contentious yes, but I would say, imperative; for the good of The Premiership… and the good of the national team.