I've seen it on Sky and on some websites that the rise of the loan system has caused somewhat of a "crisis" in the game. Is it really that bad? I mean, the only disadvantage I can see it brings is that the player is only there for a short term and is looked upon as a sort of hired gun. However, as we have seen, full transfers are by no means guarantees of longetivity at a club. To wit, Crespo's stint at Inter and Ronaldo's at Barca. Besides, loans somewhat level the financial gulf between the rich clubs and the poorer ones.
I personally don't like it all that much unless a team is transferring a player to another league altogether. When players are loaned out to other teams within their own league, both clubs involved of course may play each other...it creates a certain conflict of interests. Even if that's not the case, what if said player is instrumental in a rival team's fate and that fate may very well determine something like relegation for the club that signed the player in the first place. Again, these are all very hypothetical situations that most probably won't occur with all players loaned out, but invariably could. It also just makes me question the loyalty to a team factor. How are players expected to feel that demonstrative loyalty to a team when one week they're playing hard for one team, and the next they're doing the same for a team that's now trying get ahead of the team the player was just playing for? Loans should at least not be allowed within the same divisions of the same leagues. That's just my opinion. It kind of reminds me of a situation I remember back in Germany, long time ago. It wasn't a loan situation, but Lothar Matthaeus had signed a contract for Bayern Muenchen the following season. Matthaeus was playing for Moenchengladbach then in the DFB Pokal (Cup Final). The winner of that match would go on to play in the then Cup Winner's Cup of Europe the following season. Gladbach was of course the last thing on Matthaeus' mind, and a victory for Bayern would mean European football the next season, and it was their only way in. Of course it came down to PK's, and on the final shot, guess who was up for Gladbach...he missed, badly of course, and Bayern won the Cup. There was a lot of stink about it later of course. I know it's not even in the same category per se as the loan question, but it just brings up a point about weird things happening and some kind of strange, inevitable fate that would make something lousy like this happen in football. I can just see that happening with inter-division loans at some point. Just my rant.
I thought you were taking about Gabriele Marcotti's latest column. He wrote a very nice one on how loans work at cnnsi.com. Where is the article you were taking about? link?
I think what they are really against is the new rule that allows a Premiership team to loan a player to another team in the Premiership. It used to be that a Premiership team could only loan a player to a team in a lower division, this is no longer the case. The biggest complaint I have seen is the player plays for his team against team X, he is then loaned out to team X and plays his old team sometime down the road that same season, some are questioning where that player's loyalty would lie.