Town boss Mick McCarthy says he can’t see why FIFA have decided to scrap the Football League’s emergency loan system from next season.
FIFA has long been against the emergency loan provision introduced by the Football League, which allows clubs to sign players on short-term loans of up to 93 days outside transfer windows, as it "affects the sporting integrity of the competitions”.
Having been given a number of reprieves, the system will be scrapped at the end of this season. Window to window and season-long loans will continue, however.
"They are stopping it. This week I’d be pretty annoyed if that were the case,” McCarthy said.
"I think it’s wrong on a few counts actually because I don’t think clubs below the Premier League can go out and sign players for seven, eight, nine million and given the 20, 30 or 40 grand a week. There’s some in our league, but not many of them.
"And below that it’s a real opportunity for clubs. We’re having the benefit, but I think it’s a real opportunity for clubs to get their players playing time, valuable playing time so they can improve and in the meantime we benefit from it, and other clubs benefit from it.
"There’s a lad who played for Peterborough last night who is on loan from West Ham [Martin Samuelsen] and he was ripping it up.
"We’ve had Ainsley here, who has done great. He’s not going to play in the Arsenal team, but he’s done really well here.
"I think it’s sad that they’re doing it and players filter down and they go and get good game time and become better players and they help the lower clubs, like we’ve been helped, a lower club from Arsenal.
"I don’t see the reason for shutting that window, but whether I see the reason or not, it’s going to happen.”
McCarthy believes it will reduce the chance for youngsters who are with big clubs to gain much-needed experience.
"In the main I think young players want to play in a team where they’re playing for points and it matters, there’s a crowd there, there’s more pressure,” he continued.
"And if they don’t get that it’s very hard to then stick them in your own team, for me to stick them in my own team, but certainly to stick them in Man United’s team or Arsenal’s team or Tottenham’s team. Sticking them in without any game time anywhere is pretty difficult.
"Harry Kane has been everywhere on loan and now he’s an England striker. I’m telling you, he wouldn’t be the England striker without having gone to Millwall, Leicester and wherever getting all those games.
"Without having those experiences going out they don’t get to be the players they are today and there’ll be loads of them that you could say that about.
"There have been so many of them that have been out on loan and have ended up being good players because of the experiences that they’ve got.”
He added: "Where are they going to play? They can’t play in the U21s if they’re over 21, you can play three overage players.
"So if you’ve got a squad of 24 or 25 and some need to have some football and somebody might benefit from it.
"If it was someone from here, somebody beneath us, Southend or Colchester or Cambridge or Peterborough, could loan one of our players, what’s wrong in doing that?
"I’ve seen the benefit this year, I loaned Luke Hyam out to Rotherham and he came back and has played in the team and has been different class.
"He wouldn’t have got that, he wouldn’t have got those games in the U21s, not a chance at the intensity that they play in our league. That was a benefit to me and I’m benefiting from being able to take loans.
"I keep seeing the benefit of it. It seems to get good, young players, who are never, ever going to play in the top teams’ first teams without some experience, the experience they need.
"And the big teams still won’t put them in, not first of all. They’ll go and buy somebody else.”
McCarthy says the change will mean he’ll have to adjust his approach when it comes to building his squad for next season.
"We’ll have to have a squad that can cope with injuries like we’ve got now,” the Blues boss said.
"But the other side of the coin somebody would say to me, ‘You wouldn’t go out and try and sign Ben Pringle, you’d use Adam McDonnell or somebody else that’s here, if Kundai Benyu was fit you might play him or you might play Alex Henshall if he was still here, you might put him in the team rather than going and getting a loan signing’.
"Well, yes I would, but we’re in that position in the top six, if we can keep pushing and we can get a better player than that then that’s what we want to do.”
He added: "But if we can’t we’ll change our policy, we’ll just have to get a squad that covers it, as simple as that.
"And if we run out of players then, then we’ll play them from below. We contingency plan all the time for it, but I don’t see it as necessary to stop that emergency loan window, I think it benefits a lot of people. I don’t know who it hurts, seems to be more benefit.”