Premier League clubs target EFL and Scottish academies in summer recruitment drive
On 15 August 2026, Premier League clubs intensified recruitment from EFL and Scottish Premiership academies during the summer transfer window, seeking young players who might follow the career paths of Antoine Semenyo and Eberechi Eze.
When Manchester City paid £12.5m for 17-year-old Jeremy Monga from Leicester City this month, Arsenal had also been interested; Monga joined Leicester at age eight and had become the club's second-youngest Premier League player in April 2025 at 15 years and 271 days, later becoming their youngest league starter and surpassing Jude Bellingham as the Championship's youngest goalscorer. That transfer illustrates a broader strategy by top-flight clubs to recruit prospects from lower-league academies before they are firmly established in senior football.
Antoine Semenyo’s pathway is cited as a model: after being rejected by several academies he was spotted by Bristol City playing college football, then progressed through loans at Newport County and Sunderland before establishing himself in the Championship and moving to Bournemouth for about £10m and subsequently to Manchester City in a £64m deal. Other examples of players developed outside the Premier League include Ollie Watkins at Exeter City, Adam Wharton at Blackburn Rovers and Eberechi Eze, who was released by Arsenal and rebuilt his career at Millwall and QPR.
Research identified 14 players recruited this summer from EFL or Scottish Premiership academies into Premier League development squads, matching the total recruited across the whole of 2025-26. Comparable counts were eight in 2024-25, 18 in 2023-24 and seven in 2022-23, while 11 of this summer’s 14 recruits are aged 18 compared with five of 14 in the equivalent sample last season. League One supplied seven of the 14 recruits this summer, up from two in the previous season.
Among the youngsters moved this summer were Blade Earley from Cambridge United to Aston Villa, Valentin Joseph from Blackburn Rovers to Brighton, George Munday from Cambridge United to Brighton, Harrison Bettoni from Wigan Athletic to Chelsea and Maxwell Adedeji from Leicester City to Tottenham. Jeremy Monga is not included in the 14-player sample because he had already broken into Leicester’s first team; his fee exemplifies how a teenager’s transfer valuation can change quickly once they establish themselves in senior football.
Clubs value 18-year-olds because they have already received years of professional coaching yet can still be integrated into under-21 or B-team environments before decisions on loans or first-team involvement. Financially, nine of the 14 moves this summer are listed as free transfers and the other five for undisclosed fees; eight of last season’s 14 were also listed as free transfers, making comparatively modest outlays an attractive strategy for Premier League recruitment departments.
The Premier League has approached the EFL about potentially capping compensation when young players move between academies; clubs losing youngsters can receive training compensation alongside future appearance-related payments and sell-on entitlements, and unresolved cases may be referred to the Professional Football Compensation Committee. Brexit has altered the recruitment landscape: an Analytics FC report, produced with immigration specialists Fragomen in 2022, estimated about 60,000 professional players in Europe had potentially been available to British clubs before freedom of movement ended, with only about 5,000 likely to qualify under the Governing Body Endorsement system — a reduction of roughly 92%. The report also noted Premier League 2 produced more British transfers to EU clubs than any other English division before Brexit, but those moves had halved by 2021-22. Liverpool’s Ifeanyi Ndukwe, who joined from Austria Vienna and impressed in pre-season, cannot play competitive matches for the Reds because he does not qualify for a work permit and a loan abroad is expected to help him build the experience required to become eligible.
International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) figures for 2025-26 show club-trained players accounted for 16.2% of Manchester City’s Premier League minutes, 15.5% for Chelsea and 12.5% for Brighton, with CIES defining a club-trained player as someone registered with their current club for at least three full seasons, or 36 months, between the ages of 15 and 21. At the other end of the scale, Tottenham’s club-trained players accounted for 0.1% of league minutes, while Bournemouth, Brentford and Burnley were all at zero; recruiting an 18-year-old from an EFL academy still allows that player to qualify as club-trained if he spends the next three seasons with his new club. Although there were 18 such moves in 2023-24, the concentration of 18-year-olds and League One players in this summer’s 14 suggests clubs are targeting the market more precisely.
For EFL clubs, the recruitment pattern raises questions about how long their top youngsters can be retained; for Premier League clubs the calculation is different. The challenge now is finding the next Watkins, Eze, Wharton or Semenyo before other clubs do.
