Jude and Jobe Bellingham help Birmingham City avoid EFL rule breach.
Birmingham City rarely utilised ‘club grown players’ during Chris Davies’ League One title-winning season.
On the surface, the EFL’s ‘club developed player’ clause appears to be an issue for Birmingham City, but a closer look reveals that it has become obsolete. The Blues have a lengthy history of internally elevating players. Butland, Redmond, Grey, Bellingham (x2), Hall, and James have all received the chant ‘one of our own’ at St Andrews in recent years.
Naming a club-developed player on their EFL squad list or even a matchday squad, as per the rules, has never been an issue until recently.
Chris Davies only included a club-developed player in a Blues lineup for four League One games last season.
Brandon Khela came in as a substitute against Reading, Wycombe, and Barnsley, while Bradley Mayo sat on the bench at Bolton. At the end of each transfer window, no club-developed player – ‘a player who has been registered with the relevant club for a minimum of 12 months before to the end of his Under 19 Season’ – was added to the Blues’ EFL squad.
This was in spite of the regulations that stipulate: “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 breaking such regulation is a reduction in the number of substitutes.
But Davies does not have to worry about fines, and he will always be entitled to choose nine substitutes for Championship games, regardless of whether he uses a club-developed player.
Birmingham City boss Chris Davies is under no pressure to use a ‘club developed player’. Why? Well, there is a method to make the entire thing meaningless.
Romelle Donovan, 18, recently signed with Premier League team Brentford, and the Blues will be able to exploit that deal to get around this rule for the next six seasons. That’s not to suggest the Blues don’t want to give homegrown players a shot.
Their freshly expanded Category One academy will be relied on in the coming years, but the trajectory of the first team makes it difficult for players to break through right now.
The truth is that very few EFL academies, if any, have produced higher-quality footballers than Blues over the last decade.
That implies they’ve met the ‘club developed player’ requirements, even if they’re no longer in the Blues’ first team.
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