English Premier League Draft: Can an NFL-Style Draft System Work in the EPL?

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the financial side of football is spiraling out of control.

The top Premier League clubs are getting richer and the gap between the top five or six clubs and the chasing pack is constantly expanding. It seems inevitable that before long there will be such a big gap that the smaller clubs will end up going bankrupt and flying down the leagues.

Something needs to be done to stop the rot, but what?

In the Nation Football League, they have a number of measures in place to ensure that no one team can run away the championship year after year.

The main one? The annual NFL Draft.

For those of you unfamiliar with the system, every summer during the off-season, a large pool of amateur players coming out of college enter themselves into the draft, where they hope to be selected by one of 32 teams.

Many of the players will be well known to American football fans and teams alike, as the college game is extremely popular in the US.

After undergoing tryouts and the February scouting in order to get themselves noticed, the players are entered into the April draft, where teams take turns selecting players they want.

It can get a little bit complicated, but in essence the idea is that the team that finished with the worst record the season before gets to make the first selection, and will more than likely take the best player on offer. Consequently, the reigning Super Bowl champion will have the 32nd pick.

After all 32 teams have chosen a player, the cycle starts again and this repeats for seven rounds. All remaining players not selected can be picked up as free agents.

The point of this? To ensure that talent is evenly distributed across the league. As a result, in the last 20 years there have been 13 different champions.

In that same time, there have been five different Premier League champions.

So can the draft work over here?

The simple answer is NO.

It works in the NFL, as there is one league of 32 teams who compete against each other year in and year out.

Unfortunately, in the Premier League, due to the promotion/relegation system, it would mean that you would have to install the draft over the entire country, which would mean the best players would end up playing in the bottom league and unable to fulfill their potential. Can you imagine Jack Wilshere being sent to ply his trade at Accrington Stanley?

Additionally, a great thing about professional sport in America is that players have to go through the college system before joining a professional side.

In World Football, players are able to join clubs at any age and will often join a club before the age of 15.

As much as I would love to see a draft-style system to help balance the power, it seems like a very unlikely prospect that would require outrageous changes to implement.

Maybe the best way to improve things would be to get in an NFL-style salary cap. It would be a start.