The Telegraph/Irish Independent featured a piece last Saturday looking at how Chelsea are 'weaponizing the loan system'. The argument is that Chelsea receive a triple benefit from the strategy of loaning players to league rivals; player development/experience with an EPL club, bolstering other squads to take on their competition and facing a weakened squad when it comes to their own fixture - the loanee is prohibited from playing against their parent club.
The rules could be changed to allow a player take on their parent club, but we see an obvious conflict of interest.
Maybe the rules could revert to clubs not being allowed to loan within their league? This is probably not warranted however as within-EPL loans are rare.
The table shows the number of senior players EPL clubs have on loan this season and how many play in the EPL. These numbers include loan-to-buy obligations. Chelsea lead the way, but only 3 of their loans are in the EPL. In total there are only 7 within-EPL loans – hardly mass weaponization? Within-EPL movement only counts for 3% of total loans.