[sherer]

I actually think this rule is quite good. It's not so much aimed at the big clubs but some of the teams in divisions lower down the leagues like the Championship or League One etc who instead of fielding an English player they field a foreign player instead. Because of this there are less English players further down the leagues to be brought by the top clubs which is one of the reasons they are always more expensive as the lower clubs don't have as big a pool to sell on due to the cheap imports they buy they have to charge more for the one or two players they can sell on.

In Austria all the top players go to Germany and their local league is full of poles and slovaks who weren't good enough to move into a bigger European league.

Going further imagine if you lived in Antwerp and your loval side was Royal Antwerp. You can't want any local Belguim players as they have an agreement with us so it's full of either United rejects or African's etc just player there for two years until they get an EU passport. A number of other top European clubs have similar agreements with clubs and ship players out like this but think about how the fans must feel who supported these clubs for 20 years or more.

The game does need some protecting from these sort of things