On Thursday evening at Middlesbrough’s training centre in Hurworth, the club’s academy director, Dave Parnaby, and his assistant, Stan Nixon, watched as a small army of young footballers, sectioned off in various age groups, played games of technically accomplished football. “You know,” said Parnaby to his companion, “a number of these kids have a chance. They’re up there with what we’ve had in the past.”

If Parnaby says that, it means something. Think 14, for that is the number of players currently on Boro’s books who have come through the academy to play for the first team. Fourteen is also the number of players at Middlesbrough who have come through the academy and played for England at some level. Most telling of all, Boro’s current first team depends as much on local lads as it does on its foreign legion.

In a league that grows ever more competitive, the Boro academy must continue to deliver. So Parnaby has spent the past two weeks simply watching the various young players on the club’s books. “As we finished up on Thursday evening, I felt we’re still doing okay. We’ve great support from the chairman, the chief executive and the manager. Our recruitment is good, plenty of scouts prepared to be out in crappy weather, our coaches know what they’re about, the social welfare, the science department, the administration. The young boys who come here go through a good process.

“Looking at the different games, I was struck by the quietness. The coaches didn’t have to say much, and the parents on the embankment knew they shouldn’t say anything. We see the academy as a fun, nonthreatening, educational environment and that’s how we intend to keep it.”

But Boro are the exception that proves the rule, right? Last Monday, the FA’s director of football, Sir Trevor Brooking, warned that the England team was under threat because of the relatively low percentage of English born players starting games in the Premier League. Brooking’s fears were echoed by Sir Bobby Charlton on Thursday. “We are getting very close to the precipice now,” said Charlton. “The precipice of England not qualifying for the European Championship. We are talking about England. England! Not qualifying.”

The numbers support pessimism. Fifteen years ago, in the first season of the Premier League, 76% of starting players were English. That percentage is down to 37. The figures are not a mystery. As television revenue from the league increases, it allows clubs to buy better players who produce better football. It has become football’s most successful cycle – better league, more money, even better league, even more money.

Brooking’s concern is the England team, and he points to the percentage of Italians in Serie A in the years the Azzurri won the World Cup: 73.

But television is not pumping hundreds of extra millions into the Italian league, and their clubs have nothing like the spending power of their English counterparts. Premier League managers buy foreign players because they are far cheaper than the home-produced alternative. The imports have not simply raised the quality of the football, they have also contributed handsomely to the extraordinary increase in revenue from international television.

The new wealth has come at a cost, with less opportunity for English-born players. Brooking and many others believe that the England team will suffer the consequences. “You would like to go to major finals as one of the six or seven teams with a chance, but it will get harder,” Brooking said. “With our current team, we could be okay for the next five years. After that, are there enough coming through?”

If anything, Brooking understates the case. Frank Lampard gets injured, Owen Hargreaves is doubtful and Gareth Barry, who has been a left-sided player for most of his career at Aston Villa, is suddenly spoken of as a central midfielder for his country. “If you took Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen away from England, who are you looking at?” asked Charlton the other day. “Bent and Johnson? Good in their way, good footballers, but . . .” He didn’t feel the need to complete the sentence. It is undeniable that the pool from which England draws its international players is not as deep as it once was.

So why haven’t other club’s academies been as successful as Middlesbrough’s? “Plenty of academies are doing really good jobs. Man United are a shining example of how to produce young players. Man City, Everton – there’s some fantastic work going on,” Parnaby says. “If the players we’ve produced were at Chelsea and Manchester United, how many would have made first-team debuts? Maybe a few, nothing like the number that have been given opportunities here.”

Former director of football at the FA, Howard Wilkinson, conceived the Charter For Quality that underpinned the academy system. That was 10 years ago. Has the system failed England? “Academies do not have a responsibility to develop players for the England team,” says Wilkinson, “but the clubs do have a responsibility to English football. The FA has a moral responsibility to give leadership and to look after the game, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word ‘moral’ used in this context.

“The academies,” adds Wilkinson, “were never as stringently monitored as they needed to be. Some of them were absolutely fantastic.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with the majority.”

The solution lies in the money that created the problem. Premier League clubs accept that they must produce some of their own players and they have the financial wherewithal to ensure their academies are properly resourced and well managed. Parnaby is right when he says many clubs are running good academies, but adds that people should understand that the process of taking in kids at nine and developing them for a decade was never going to produce instant results.

Arsène Wenger came to Arsensal in 1996, a year before Wilkinson’s Charter For Quality. Wenger’s recruitment policy has been an indictment of the quality of players produced in England. The Arsenal manager has signed few English players and the club regularly fields teams without one English player. Ironically, Wenger is convinced the academy system is working.

“When I arrived in England there was no correct youth-team development. When it started, people wanted results quickly. The answer is that it takes 10 years. We have 16-year-olds in our academy now who are of a quality I have never seen since I have been in England. They are ready to compete. Look at the signs. England’s Under17 team is starting to get results. The best time to be England manager will be in the middle of the next decade. But I will have a beard and walking stick by then.”

Others are less convinced. Brooking believes much needs to be done in terms of coaching, staffing levels and external monitoring before academies start doing their job properly. Sir Alex Ferguson is even more concerned about the academy system, saying earlier this year that he believes it has “fallen apart”. It is the England team that will pick up the tab.

If the English football culture were to lose its position of eminence, television money would decrease, the foreign imports would be fewer and the opportunities for young England players will increase. This is precisely what has underpinned the improvement in Scotland’s national team. In a country as obsessed by football as England, cycles are conceivable, but not a linear descent into mediocrity. Even with a beard and walking stick, Wenger would surely produce an England team capable of holding on to the ball a little longer.

Agree with Brooking’s pessimism if you wish, accept Wenger’s optimism for the next decade if that is your inclination. What is indisputable is that the Premier League is changing and English players are being squeezed out. Without experience in the country’s top league, the best young players cannot realise their potential. The most recent success of the Middlesbrough academy is also the best example of why we should worry.

At the beginning of this season Boro’s young defender David Wheater was fifth, possibly even sixth, in the pecking order of centre-backs at the club. But injuries to Jonathan Woodgate, Robert Huth, Emanuel Pogatetz and Chris Riggott meant that Gareth Southgate began the season with Wheater and fellow academy graduate Andrew Davies in the centre of his defence. To the surprise of even Boro fans, Wheater has taken to the Premier League like a duck to water.

He looks comfortable, defends well and his composure belies his inexperience. As well as doing his defensive duties, Wheater is a threat at set-pieces and last weekend scored with a fine header in the 2-0 victory over Birmingham. He forces us to pay attention; then we realise he has played for England at every underage level.

At a recent get-together with fans in Middlesbrough, club chairman Steve Gibson was asked about the 20-year-old. “If we were offered £10m for David, I wouldn’t sell.” Now here’s the question: how would David Wheater’s career have progressed if Woodgate, Huth, Pogatetz and Riggott had all been fit for every game through the early weeks? Would we now be talking about David Wheater? Would his chairman be valuing him at £10m?