MATT BARLOW: There are 2.3BILLION reasons why football needs a transfer tax on the elite

As Premier League clubs spend £2.36bn on transfers, Maidstone United struggle with the money to replace two aging toilet blocks and wonder how they will find the £250,000 needed to upgrade their 3G pitch next summer to replace.

Grimsby signed a dozen players, but without the £100,000 it took to put a new roof on the Pontoon Stand, when a safety inspection found this had become a matter of urgency after years of neglect under previous owners.

A further £100,000 had already been earmarked to reseed the Blundell Park playing field and training pitches.

In Lincoln, they tried to maintain their upward mobility while asking their owners to raise £500,000 to make up losses from the cost-of-living crisis and inflation, which have pushed costs up by about 18 per cent since the beginning of last year. season.

The ecosystem of English football is changing.

At a high level, they are normalizing the transfer fee of £100 million and wages of £450,000 a week. Down in the foothills, they worry about a bar renovation, new powder rooms, or an upgrade as a striker.

It feels like the two extremes have never been so far apart. Yet they are still connected. They are still interdependent, but through various incremental changes over time, all power has ended up in the hands of the elite.

Less than five percent of Premier League clubs’ record spending this summer has been spent on players from the EFL.

The greats were Joao Pedro for £30 million from Watford to Brighton, Alex Scott for £25 million from Bristol City to Bournemouth and Gustavo Hamer from Coventry to Sheffield United for £15 million.

Andrew Omobamidele left Norwich for Nottingham Forest for £11.5 million and Luton spent around £10 million on four players, but the top half of the top appear to have given up investing in established players at this level.

Chuba Akpom and Viktor Gyokeres, the top scorers in the championship last season, have both moved abroad.

Since the rules on this sort of thing have changed, the wealthier clubs have come to the conclusion that it is much better for them to take on the top EFL players for a pittance during their youth years.

Amid the hundreds of millions spent this summer, Manchester City signed 16-year-old goalkeeper Spike Brits from AFC Wimbledon, Chelsea signed teenage striker Alex Matos from Norwich and Aston Villa signed teenager Rico Richards on the loose from West Bromwich Albion.

Brighton signed Jacob Slater from Preston and Brentford picked up a couple of promising players from Rochdale and Oxford for their B team. There are others, often acquired more discreetly at an even younger age.

They are all placed in youth development programs and are paid huge salaries, which are then loaned out for huge sums at the later stages of their development cycle, willingly paid by clubs that please them, help players by introducing them to real football and while reducing their labor costs. and improving their market values.

Aston Villa will set aside around £35 million for Cameron Archer and Aaron Ramsey, a fee boosted by their performance on loan at Middlesbrough, who are now struggling. Last summer, Villa Carney sold Chukwuemeka, a player picked from Northampton Town, to Chelsea for £20 million.

Top clubs still depend on the lower leagues for talent, but they have found a way to make money while also offsetting their lavish spending habits.

The seepage of wealth through the pyramid has virtually come to a standstill. Championship clubs want to recruit from overcrowded Premier League academies rather than buying up and coming talent from League One. And so forth. The money transferred through solidarity payments is trickling back up.

None of this bodes well for clubs at the bottom. The system needs a reset to help them, the communities they serve and the history that sustains and makes the Premier League a spectacle.

On Saturday, thousands more watched League Two football than the Etihad to see Manchester City against Fulham. No wonder there is strong support for introducing a stamp tax on Premier League transfers.

It was an idea floated in Tracey Crouch’s fan-led review that needed serious consideration.

Ten percent of £2.36 billion would go a long way toward redressing the imbalance.

Pain from missing the deadline

In addition to the usual hamstring and groin injuries, a new category of team news arrived on Saturday: players absent due to emotional tension.

Joao Palhinha, Lloyd Kelly, Jonson Clarke-Harris and Luke Armstrong were all unavailable and harboring the pain of missing out on dream transfers.

Preston on his way to the top, like the era of doo-wop?

With Preston North End at the top of the Championship list, it’s only natural to wonder what was number 1 in the charts when they were relegated from the top league in May 1961.

No wonder anymore, as it was Blue Moon by The Marcels, the doo-wop classic now soundtracking Manchester City’s relentless march.

Irish talent runs deep at Brighton

Brighton’s Irish goal-scoring talent runs deeper than Evan Ferguson, who continued his progress with a hat-trick against Newcastle on Saturday.

Mark O’Mahony, also 18 and signed from Cork City in January, scored the only Under 21 goal against Nottingham Forest on Friday, his fifth in four games.

They also have goalkeeper Killian Cahill and Andrew Moran on loan from Blackburn in the latest Republic of Ireland Under 21 squad.

Moura could win the post-Spurs trophy

Lucas Moura has wasted no time focusing on silverware after leaving Tottenham.

Moura secured Sao Paulo a place in the Copa do Brasil final with the winning goal in a semi-final against Corinthians. Sao Paulo will take on Flamengo in a two-legged final later this month.

Get the ball off Hogan

Full marks for his persistence, but who in Birmingham thinks it’s a good idea for Scott Hogan to take penalties? Saturday’s miss in the 1-1 draw against Millwall was his fifth of the last seven.

Evans above!

Will Evans worked on the family dairy farm in Mid Wales less than two years ago. He got up at 4:30 am to milk the cows and played for Bala Town.

Now the 26-year-old tops the League Two goalscoring list with eight out of seven for Newport County, who signed the former Wales C international last year.

Mousehole is the pride of Cornwall

Far to the west the mouse holes roar.

For the first time in Step 4 of the pyramid after promotion from the Western League, the westernmost team in English football have made an unbeaten start and reached the FA Cup Second Qualifying Round for the first time in their 101-year history. by beating Bashley on Saturday.

Mousehole represents a fishing port south of Penzance with a population of less than 700 and is the highest ranked team playing in Cornwall as National League South side Truro City reside in Devon while work is underway on a new stadium for Cornwall, a project which will transform sport in the province