Scare story feeds the beast

So, to feed the football beast, we've had yet another scary report about the scarcity of domestic talent in the top flight and how poor Roy Hodgson has so few live bodies from which to choose. To be fair, the numbers are ugly. Just 189 Englishmen took to the pitch in the Premier League in the 2012-13 season, compared to 332 Spaniards in La Liga, 269 Italians in Serie A, 320 Frenchmen in Ligue 1 and 224 Germans in the Bundesliga (where there are only 18 clubs). What's more, as a group, they made just 3411 appearances, far less than their colleagues in Europe's other major leagues.

OK, so what else is new? It has been this way for the past 15 years. And there are plenty of reasons for it. Remarkably, the fact that English clubs aren't particularly good at producing talented footballers is only part of it. An important part, to be sure and one which is likely tied to the relative lack of Uefa licensed coaches (England has fewer per capita than most Western European nations). But, still, only part of the equation.

For a start, the numbers are skewed by the presence of Welshmen, Irishmen and the odd Scot who are English born and bred but chose to represent their country of ancestry. It happens to some degree elsewhere (particularly France, where kids of first-generation immigrants sometimes opt for other nations) but nowhere is it as pronounced as England.

Second, the Premier League's TV contract means that even bottom-half clubs have sizeable budgets (at the top, the differences are far less pronounced). When a club like Wigan earns more in TV revenue than all but the top 20 to 25 non-English European teams, it adds up to tremendous clout on the transfer market. Which, in turn, means they can buy quality foreign players cheaper than English ones of equal ability. (Smallish clubs in other nations also buy from abroad, of course, but because they have less money, they tend to gamble more on lesser ones.)

Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, it's entirely debatable whether all this is actually a bad thing. The Premier League is hugely popular, but so is the Championship, where attendances are as high as they have been for three or four decades. League One crowds are also huge. Could this be – at least in part – because the level is as high as it has ever been? Englishmen who are shut out of Premier League clubs drop down a level and raise the quality of the Championship. And those they displace repeat the process in League One. If you believe quality matters, and that quality draws crowds, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

As for the England team, sure, it's a small pool, made smaller by the fact that English players tend not to move abroad, mostly for financial reasons. But the ones who do make it on the pitch play against a standard of opposition that is higher than in previous years. And if playing against and training with the very best around makes you better, then it can't really be a bad thing, can it?

Could English youth development be better? Like the old "you can't be too rich or too thin" adage, of course it could. And there are a number of ways to do it. More and better-trained coaches. A more inclusive approach to recruitment (quick, apart from the sons of professional footballers, how many middle class, let alone upper class, English footballers can you name? Exactly my point.) A better system of loaning players to lower division clubs, or even – why not? – co-ownership. Reserve teams in the lower divisions. Smaller squad sizes, so you don't have England internationals who rarely get on the pitch. Maybe even the Premier League's new-fangled Elite Player Performance Plan, their long-term strategy designed to boost youth development.

But simply banging on about the same set of figures which have been largely unchanged for years, accompanied by gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair won't do much. It's not a reflection of the failure of the system, it's a reflection of the economic might of the Premier League. And that has little to do with English clubs' inability to produce Englishmen who can play in their own country's top flight.

You don't want to read too much into it, but last week David Moyes granted an extended live interview to a national commercial radio network. And he did it without PR flacks perched on his shoulder and a pre-arranged list of questions.

It may not become a regular occurrence, but it would have been simply unthinkable under his predecessor. Yes, the times they are a-changing at Old Trafford.

We will know soon enough to what degree Moyes will change Manchester United on the pitch. But, off it, you can already see how he's being his own man. And maybe we shouldn't be surprised. He may be a young babe relative to Sir Alex Ferguson, but Moyes has proved in more than a decade at Everton that he is his own man, who does things his way. And, most of all, a guy who understands that Sir Alex's path isn't the only one leading to success.

Shahid Khan, Fulham's new owner, evidently likes a challenge. The Cottagers have survived in the Premier League, despite competition from Chelsea less than two miles down the road, and Queens Park Rangers a few miles further away, and despite a pretty, but tiny, riverside stadium that can't be redeveloped. But this has come at a price.

It's hard to see Fulham as anything but a money pit. But then, Khan's NFL club, the Jacksonville Jaguars, are no different. Last season, his first in charge, they were the worst in the league, winning just two of 16 games. On top of that, they are one of the few teams in the league who struggle to fill their stadium, which often ends up with large tarpaulins draped over entire stands, simply because empty seats are bad for business.

Fulham made annual losses under Mohamed Al-Fayed and it's hard to see things being different with Khan at the helm. Maybe he's OK with that. Or maybe he sees himself as a miracle worker, on both sides of the Atlantic.