Manchester City's Strategic Move for Jeremy Monga
Manchester City’s £12.5m move for Jeremy Monga last month was not just another big club raiding a smaller one. It was a statement in a race that is getting faster, younger and far more calculated.
Arsenal wanted him. Plenty of others watched closely. City got him.
Monga, a winger who walked through Leicester City’s doors at eight, has already ripped up a few pages of the record book. He became Leicester’s second-youngest Premier League player in April 2025 at 15 years and 271 days. He then went on to become their youngest league starter and overtook Jude Bellingham as the youngest goalscorer in Championship history.
He is the polished tip of a much broader trend: Premier League clubs are scouring the lower leagues and Scotland for teenagers they can mould before senior football – or just as they are breaking into it.
The new gold rush
The logic is obvious.
Antoine Semenyo was turned away by several academies before Bristol City picked him up from college football. He went out on loan to Newport County and Sunderland, fought his way into the Championship, then jumped to Bournemouth for about £10m and on again to Manchester City in a £64m deal.
Ollie Watkins emerged from Exeter City. Adam Wharton from Blackburn Rovers. Eberechi Eze rebuilt his career at Millwall and QPR after Arsenal released him.
Those stories are no longer romantic outliers. They are case studies on recruitment slides.
Clubs know that if they can spot the next Semenyo, Watkins, Wharton or Eze early enough, the upside is enormous. BBC Sport research shows 14 players have already been recruited this summer from EFL or Scottish Premiership academies into Premier League development squads.
That figure already equals the total across the whole of 2025-26. There were eight such moves in 2024-25, 18 in 2023-24 and seven in 2022-23.
The volume matters. The profile matters more.
Why 18 is the magic number
Of those 14 players identified this summer, 11 are 18 years old. Last season, only five of the 14 in the same sample were 18.
The market has narrowed. Clubs are zoning in on a very specific age band.
At 18, these players have been in professional environments for years. They are tactically educated, physically developing, but still have time to spend in under-21 or B-team football before a decision is made: loan, integrate, or move on.
League One has become a key hunting ground. Seven of this summer’s 14 recruits came from the third tier. Last season, that number was just two.
Names are already on the move. Blade Earley has left Cambridge United for Aston Villa. Valentin Joseph has gone from Blackburn Rovers to Brighton, while Brighton also took George Munday from Cambridge United. Harrison Bettoni has switched from Wigan Athletic to Chelsea. Maxwell Adedeji has joined Tottenham from Leicester City.
Monga, interestingly, does not even feature in BBC Sport’s 14-player sample because he had already broken into Leicester’s first team. His £12.5m fee underlines how quickly the numbers jump once a teenager proves he can handle senior football.
Low fees, big upside
The financial appeal is stark.
Nine of the 14 moves identified this summer are listed as free transfers. The other five are for undisclosed fees. Last season, eight of the 14 were also listed as free.
For clubs used to paying tens of millions for established starters, spreading relatively small sums across several promising teenagers is an easy calculation. If only one becomes a regular Premier League player, the strategy can pay for itself several times over.
But that strategy sits inside a bigger, more contentious debate: how much should clubs be allowed to pay – or be forced to pay – for academy talent?
The Premier League has approached the EFL about potentially capping compensation when young players move between academies. Clubs that lose youngsters can currently receive training compensation, appearance-related add-ons and sell-on clauses. Disputes can go to the Professional Football Compensation Committee.
Those rules matter more than ever when the market is this active.
Brexit closes one door, opens another
Another force is shaping these decisions: Brexit.
Before freedom of movement ended, English clubs could sweep across Europe, scouting a huge pool of players without worrying about work permits for EU nationals. Analytics FC, working with immigration specialists Fragomen, estimated in 2022 that roughly 60,000 professional players in Europe were potentially available to British clubs before Brexit.
Under the Governing Body Endorsement system, they calculated only about 5,000 would likely qualify for a permit. A reduction of around 92%.
The squeeze is particularly harsh on younger players.
Liverpool defender Ifeanyi Ndukwe is a sharp example. The 18-year-old joined from Austria Vienna and impressed in pre-season, but he cannot play competitive matches because he does not have a work permit. A loan abroad is expected so he can gain the experience needed to qualify.
A teenager already in an English academy faces none of those immigration hurdles.
Brexit has also slowed the flow in the other direction. Analytics FC found that before Brexit, Premier League 2 produced more British transfers to EU clubs than any other English division. By 2021-22, those moves had halved.
The data does not prove Brexit directly pushed Premier League clubs towards EFL academies. But it has reshaped the environment in which young players are found, signed and developed.
Different clubs, different philosophies
There is no single blueprint for youth development in the Premier League.
Figures from the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) for 2025-26 show that club-trained players accounted for 16.2% of Manchester City’s Premier League minutes. Chelsea were next on 15.5%, Brighton on 12.5%.
CIES defines 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. That means an 18-year-old arriving from an EFL academy can still qualify as club-trained if he spends the next three seasons at his new Premier League club.
At the opposite end, Tottenham’s club-trained players contributed just 0.1% of league minutes. Bournemouth, Brentford and Burnley recorded zero.
For clubs in that bracket, recruiting from EFL and Scottish academies offers a different way of building a development pipeline. They do not have to rely solely on boys who have worn the badge since primary school. They can identify a teenager polished elsewhere, bring him into an under-21 set-up at 17, 18 or 19, and take charge of the final, decisive steps of his development.
A targeted hunt, not a frenzy
The numbers do not yet show a runaway surge. There were 18 such moves in 2023-24. This summer’s 14 deals are not unprecedented.
But look closer. The cluster of 18-year-olds. The spike in League One recruits. The free transfers. The undisclosed but modest fees. It all points to clubs sharpening their focus rather than simply throwing wider nets.
For EFL sides, that poses a difficult question: how long can they realistically hold on to their best teenagers when the Premier League is watching this closely?
For the elite, the question is different, and far more ruthless. Somewhere in the EFL or the Scottish Premiership, the next Watkins, Eze, Wharton or Semenyo is already in someone else’s kit. The only thing that matters now is who finds him first.
