ESC and EFL League Two: A big recruitment opportunity

What does analysis tell us about how ESC could be used in the fourth tier?

During this League Two week I have intimated a couple of times that the fourth tier doesn’t traditionally see much foreign recruitment.

The image below provides the key information about League Two business over the last decade. Most of the information is taken from Transfermarkt, which means that the currency is in Euro and doesn’t take into account tribunal fees or undisclosed fees that have been spent by clubs.

From the data we can see that it is very unusual for transfers to be non-domestic. The bias towards domestic players being signed in League Two has never dropped below 97%.

However, the introduction of ESC (Elite Significant Contribution) in 2023, which applies to League Two as every club will be in receipt of two slots that they can use for ESC players, has seen a couple of clubs take advantage of the regulations to purchase players for those slots. Hence we see the domestic spend bias dropping from 100% for the first time in at least a decade.

It is also worth mentioning that Tyler Miller’s signing by Notts County last month isn’t even included in this table, so there have been four ESC transfers this season now, double last season’s total.

This begs the question, are League Two clubs ready to shop abroad? And if so, is it worthwhile?