The whole of England went Rickie Lambert crazy last week after the 31-year-old netted the winner for the Three Lions against Scotland with his first touch on the international stage.
And indeed, the Southampton forward’s rise to prominence is an inspiring and captivating tale. Released by Liverpool aged 15 and subsequently Blackpool two years later, Lambert earned his place in the Premier League and the England squad the hard way – working his way up from the depths of lower league football with spells at Macclesfield, Stockport County, Rochdale and Bristol Rovers, before the Saints acquired his services in 2009 for £1million.
As the south coast outfit achieved back-to-back promotions to the English top flight, Lambert’s efforts in front of goal gained notoriety, netting 78 times in 132 appearances for his League 1 and Championship campaigns combined at St. Mary’s.
But the enigmatic Lambert’s ascension into the England squad is a rarity to say the least for a former fourth tier player, and more than anything, the 31-year-old’s defiance of the footballing norm in England highlights the Premier League’s snobbery regarding lower league players.
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The negative cultural stigmatism attached to those donning their trade at any level lower than the top flight couldn’t be summed up better than by Three Lions manager Roy Hodgson himself, who remarked after including Lambert in his squad for the Scotland friendly: “I’d just gone to Fulham and we played [Bristol Rovers] in the FA Cup – and lost on penalties. Lambert played, and did very well.
“Like I am certain many other managers, we looked at it and thought, ‘Division One? Is he going to be able to step up?’ and we didn’t take the chance – but other clubs did.”
The former Cottagers boss decided Lambert wasn’t good enough for the top flight, and rather than taking a punt on a budding Englishman who’d been taking the lower leagues by storm, Hodgson signed former Norway international Erik Nevland, who found the net just nine times in three seasons in West London. But now Lambert has wormed his way into the Premier League, with 15 goals in his inaugural top tier campaign, he’s more than good enough for an England squad that’s disturbingly lacking in prolific centre-forwards.
Fair enough, every manager lets transfer opportunities slip through the net, but this summer alone, we’ve seen Premier League clubs reject Championship and lower league players in favour of signings from the continent on an almost systematic scale. So far in the current transfer window, only 15 of the 61 Premier League signings to date have been promoted from the lower tiers, and with six of that 15 having already played in the top fight, three of which did so last season, the actual number of players from the Championship or beyond is ten, and three of those – West Ham’s Danny Whitehead, Cardiff’s Simon Moore and Stoke’s Alex Grant – are unlikely to feature next season, being still considered as youth prospects.
So that’s just six from 61 players in total without top flight experience who will be playing Premier League football this season that played Championship football last term without acquiring promotion, while the top flight welcomes 46 new foreign arrivals.
It begs the question of what do we actually use the lower tiers for? The Championship is often praised for its high quality and depth of competition from top to bottom, with just 13 points between relegation and play-off places last season, but a Premier League outfit actually investing in a second flight player has become a rarer occurrence.
And it’s very much a glass ceiling, considering that in comparison to the Premier League, 33 players have jumped ship to the Championship from clubs plying their trade in League 1 or lower already this summer, equating to around 30 % of all transfers. But unlike the Premier League, a significant amount of second tier acquisitions have been sourced from other Championship clubs, whilst only ten Premiership players have secured new tenures at other top flight outfits thus far in the current transfer window.
It seems the prevailing opinion is that a striker who can net 25 times in the Championship will be disturbingly lacking in front of goal in the top flight, or a goalie that can keep a wealth of clean sheets in the second tier will suddenly become a flap-happy calamity ‘keeper in the Premier League. Despite often claiming the Championship is one of the most competitive second tiers in world football, the gulf between itself and the Premier League is still judged as too vast.
Gary Hooper had to move to the SPL with Celtic to get a top flight club to acquire his services, despite scoring 43 goals in 80 appearances for Scunthorpe and being the Championship’s third top scorer during the 2009/2010 campaign, at just 22 years of age. But the £5million Norwich signing is yet another Premier League starlet to have to work his way up from the bottom, having started his playing career with Grays Athletic.
There are signs that things are changing for the better however. Along with Lambert and Hooper, who both began in lower league football, Crystal Palace signed budding youngster Dwight Gayle this summer for £4.5 million from Peterborough after plying his trade with Essex Senior League outfit Stanstead FC two years ago, and had it not been for a failed medical examination, fellow former non-leaguer Charlie Austin would’ve joined Hull. Similarly, ex-Eagles prodigy Wilfried Zaha officially joined Manchester United for an initial £10million fee in January.
But there still remains a negative stigmatism in the Premier League towards players from the lower tiers, especially if they’ve already surpassed the 24 year old benchmark. Top flight managers view foreign imports as less risky, despite the obvious flawed logic; can a Spaniard, an Argentine or an Italian from abroad possess a greater knowledge or better understanding of the English game than a tried and tested Championship performer? It’s almost as if excelling in the second flight pigeon-holes players for their foreseeable future, rather than implying that they’re ready for the next level.
Pundits, managers and players alike often bemoan the poor state of the England national team. But with the Premier League cutting off opportunities for Englishmen in the lower tiers to play football at the highest level, is it that surprising that our top flight is now filled with foreign imports to the extent that only 34% of starting line-ups from the Premiership’s opening weekend were home-grown talents?
We’re suffocating the English game by our reliance on players from abroad, and a significant factor in that process has been the Premier League’s cultural lower league snobbery. Unfortunately for Rickie Lambert, he doesn’t represent the end of the trend, but rather shines brightly as a rare anomaly.
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