As THAT issue starts to dominate again, Hugh Southon reports on how Premier League football could look in a post-Brexit world

Brexit – and a hard one at that – possibly become a reality on October 31 thoughts of many inside West Ham and the game at large as to how a Premier League football would look with an EU exit.

And whilst there can be no certainties of anything in this, or any other area, if the Football Association gets its way, the number of overseas players allowed at PL clubs  would reduce to 12 from 17!

West Ham and Watford have both opposed the FA’s lobbying at a number of meetings and it seems unlikely the ruling body will get its way over the financially all-powerful PL.

In theory Brexit could stop the free movement of players from Europe but the Home Office has a scheme in place which allows players  of exceptional talent, or those playing regularly for any of of Fifa’s 50 international teams, to join UK clubs.

Should legislation be introduced by a British government to change that then of course there are problems but it seems unlikely.

Any immigration policy which affected the situation would be damaging to the UK given that the PL is of huge economic befit to the UK so any government silly enough to harm such benefits would being doing itself no favours at all in economic or electoral terms.

However, a Hammers senior insider – discussing the issue with ClaretandHugh by e mail made it clear that whilst nothing changes for the new season there may be an impact long term.

He said: ” Nobody knows what will happen. It will be for next season,  not this, but it already makes future planning difficult.

Personally, I think the 17 will reduce over a few seasons as you can’t dump contracted players, but hopefully not to 12.

“Should that happen the PL won’t be able to compete for the big European trophies and will cease to be a huge export earner fir the UK.”

In West Ham terms, however, it is good to see highly talented youngsters emerging as should allocations decrease the club could be very well placed to take advantage.

Only this morning a Daily Mirror report published elsewhere on CandH showed the club has now entered the top 10 in developing home grown talent, taking ninth place and moving up from 11th.

Hammers graduates spent a total of 19,608 minutes playing Premier League football last season and in a post-Brexit world – if that’s to be the case – we will be better placed than many to take advantage of the changed circumstances.

Indeed, with football’s inflationary cycle increasing ridiculously year on year youth development increasingly looks the way forward for many clubs long term.