Roddy said: 'In the next four years we will be spending £320million on youth development directly into the clubs. I don't care whose statistics you look at, that is a lot of money, a seismic shift in the way we approach youth development.

'Clubs will still be able to sell players on, by the way, if it's mutually agreed.'

It is the lack of mutual agreement on the value of a teenager that troubles the Football League. The new payments are in accordance with FIFA, the hope being that this will encourage a domestic club to recruit a 16-year-old English player over a - previously cheaper - foreign counterpart.

From one angle this is about boosting domestic percentages; from another it looks something like theft. McClair noted that 70 clubs voted for EPPP. As a United employee, he could be said to be partial, but, like Roddy, McClair's perspective is simultaneously narrow and broad.

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