qpr manager neil warnock has spoken at length in the past about players who don't try

Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore has put his hands up today to admit that the league has to be partly culpable for the dismal performance of England in the World Cup.

The pursuit of success – and ultimately money – has been a bar to English players getting game time in the top division. That may be true, but England’s performance in the World Cup is really a red herring when it comes to the real problems that money has created in England.

The real problem is a growing tide of disinterest in players underneath the international elite. The Premier League has created a sea of happy, rich bench warmers who care little for the club they play for, and would not care if they ever played again, so long as they picked up the life-changing monthly pay cheques being meted out by cash-rich clubs.

This week we see a stark example of the dangers of pandering to the ever-increasing expectations on football clubs as Portsmouth fight for their very life in the courts. At the root of their problem is a suspected tax dodge in which they paid players in image rights in an attempt to avoid paying tax. This is something that HM Customs and Excise is very keen to put an end to, but the damage for Portsmouth has been done.

As the money has trickled down to the Championship, the epidemic of lazy football professional is starting to reach pandemic proportions with clubs with little margin for error financially, overleveraging themselves with overpaid and underperforming stars in the hope of sneaking into the Premier League. With parachute payments DOUBLING this season many see it as a risk worth taking, but some it could mean ruin.

Some clubs have had it worse than others – and some clubs have only had themselves to blame. A good example is QPR who have been known in the game as a club who have overpaid their players for a number of years. Their reward has certainly not been performance related, with the West London club managing little more than rising to mid-table in the Championship and not reaching a single play-off final since they were relegated from the Premier League 15 years ago. They have twice almost gone bust, too.

Others have had similar problems and a BBC pre-season special on the English leagues on Tuesday night, involving QPR manager Neil Warnock, had a long discussion about how a significant number of professionals were quite happy to never play football again, thanks to their new superstar lifestyles.

What does this mean for gamblers? Prinicipally it means that there is more to backing a side than simply looking at what players they have in their squad because, in some cases, those players would not give two figs about the club they are playing for or how well they are playing.

There are some clues to the state of play in each club, which I have touched on in a blog post about managers-speak before.

But we have to be wary: some clubs will look good on paper, but don’t live up to expectations. This may not be just about form.

Conversely, some managers are well aware of the situation and the strongest of them have started selecting players on the basis of their ‘attitude’. Warnock is a good example of this, although perhaps the best example is Norwich City manager Paul Lambert who looks like he has tailor-made his signings to avoid the bench-warming no-gooders.

How can we tell which manager is which? It is difficult, but managers with a lot of experience who have had their fingers burned before are likely to be better equipped to spot a ‘bad ‘un’ early.

Essentially, though, only time will tell. But if a team is underperforming and certain players don’t seem to be putting in a shift next season – there maybe a simple answer to why.

Money.