Nigel Pearson hasn’t exactly closed the loan market off for Bristol City but has once again voiced his scepticism over the efficiency of operating that way, and should the Robins sign anyone on a temporary basis from a Premier League club, it’ll be much later in the summer.
Over his four transfer windows since becoming City manager, Pearson has never once loaned a player into his first-team squad, instead electing to recruit permanent transfers or promote from within the academy.
The Robins are an anomaly in the Championship for such a practice as many of their rivals' squads are populated by up to four loan players, with notable successes last season being Taylor Harwood-Bellis (Manchester City to Burnley), Amad Diallo (Manchester United to Sunderland) and Ryan Giles (Wolves to Middlesbrough).
Pearson’s issues have previously been that the atmosphere of the City dressing room wasn’t right to introduce a loan signing and/or that paying for a player up front, supplementing their wages, only to send them back with no direct financial return, made no financial sense.
He’s since furthered that argument to include the slightly cynical policy of top-flight clubs treating their younger talent almost as cash cows, hawking them around the EFL for exorbitant loan fees to make a profit, with no regard for individual player development beyond the fact they may get minutes.
Speaking at the High Performance Centre on Monday, Pearson repeated this message but also admitted that such is the difference of a Premier League club’s pre-season in 2023, youngsters only tend to be released on the eve of a season.
With so many international players in the top flight, clubs have to supplement their squads with younger talent to fulfil their summer fixture obligations, often on lucrative overseas tours, so simply cannot allow them to join a Championship side for pre-season.
That then, ultimately, for Pearson has a bearing as to whether it's prudent to make that sort of decision so late into the window, with no chance of a period for adaptation in their new surroundings.
“Everybody wants to talk about the loan market with me for some reason,” Pearson said. “When you discuss with clubs the potential of loaning players, I always listen with interest when people ask me ‘why aren’t you playing Premier League teams?’ Have you tried getting a Premier League side here, they’ll go abroad and their squads are populated by internationals.
"You’ve got no chance of anybody getting an early loan. Premier League clubs use their youngsters for the games in pre-season because all of their big hitters are having a break and a well-needed break too. For international players now there’s no such thing as a summer break, really.”
Drawing on City’s attempts to loan Jake O’Brien from Crystal Palace in January, which proved unsuccessful as the Premier League side demanded too high a loan fee, Pearson simply doesn’t want to play a game in which the interests of the player are simply not at the heart of the decision-making.
“I’ve spoken on many occasions that they can be an expensive thing to do. So there’s a centre-back we were linked with from Crystal Palace, who was over in Belgium,” he added. “From what he was earning from what Crystal Palace wanted, they wanted four times what he was earning to come here on loan. It’s not really player development is it?
“On their part that’s - we want to make some money on our player going out on loan. For me, that underlines why I don’t want to do that kind of business. I don’t want to do that type of business, that’s nonsense.
“When we explore whether we loan out players out, the only thing in my mind is football, the finances, that end of the building can sort that rubbish out, it’s nothing to do with me. It’s about whether it’s the right thing for us to do for the development of our player, full stop.”
The market can also work the other way in City’s favour, of course, given the wealth of talent in the Under-21 set-up and the hopes that more can follow in the footsteps of Alex Scott, Tommy Conway and Sam Bell and become first-team regulars.
Pearson is running the rule over 15 youngsters this week - not including goalkeepers - on the basis of including some for next week’s training camp in Austria and potentially the games programme over the summer, should they prove themselves accordingly.
Decisions will then be made regarding their immediate futures and whether their development is best-served at the HPC or elsewhere on loan, where they can earn competitive minutes. As was the case last season with mixed results for Joe Low (Walsall), Owura Edwards (Ross County), Dylan Kadji (Swindon Town), Sam Pearson (Yeovil Town and AFC Wimbledon) and Seb Palmer-Houlden (Yeovil).
“The games programme that we put together in pre-season is based on what is going to be a tough test for us. I don’t want tippy tappy possession-based keep-ball sessions, we can do that ourselves,” he said. “We want games where there’s going to be physicality and where we can manage the minutes for the players.
“In terms of loaning players out or getting players in on loan, I want to see our own players, I don’t wanna see them play for someone else, I want to see what they’re like in here, and because of how we have structured and streamlined in terms of what it looks like, our best players get fast-tracked within our own system.
“Our Under-18s will get fast-tracked to the Under-21s, and the Under-21s into the first team and if they’re not good enough we’ll move them on. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, it’s about trying to find the right place for your players.
“The days are gone now for us having too many players and we just loan them out because we’ve got too many players. We want to keep our best players, and we want to develop them for the first team, and if they’re not good enough we want to try and find a place for them in football. Likewise getting players in from getting players in from other places on loan.”
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