Growing up in east London, I played Sunday League football like most of my friends did.

I competed in the Echo Premier League, where I came up against a team called Senrab which had once had the likes of Bobby Zamora, Ashley Cole, John Terry and Paul Konchesky on their books.

Whenever my team, Barking Colts, faced Senrab we knew we would be coming up against some of the better youngsters the area had to offer.

Having such proven Premier League players grace their illustrious club, it attracted a large number of kids to the club.

Children felt that they had a better chance of being noticed by scouts when they wore the red and black of Senrab.

Their continued success of getting talented kids into Premier League academies allowed them to keep going as a club.

It is a strategy of which Fletcher Moss Rangers must now take advantage of.

David Horrocks, the club’s academy development officer and skills coach, has admitted that there has been a lot of interest in the club since Marcus Rashford burst on the scene with four goals in two days.

“The same thing happened five years ago with Danny Welbeck,” said Horrocks.

But somehow they failed to capitalise on the increased media coverage and are in a terrible state, to the point that they could go under.

Much of the blame can fall upon the Football Association and local councils, for allowing grassroot clubs to get in such a terrible state.

The current TV deal will see £1 billion shared between grassroots football and lower league sides but that clearly isn’t enough.

The state of local clubs is abysmal and the fact that Fletcher Moss say that they need £2 million investment is a damning indictment of the lack of financial investment at that level.

Horrocks called upon Fletcher Moss’s ex-stars to help fix the club and allow the club to keep running, to give local kids the chance to be the next Rashford.

But perhaps United as a club could give a small donation given how many of their homegrown players started off there.

Tyler Blackett, currently on loan at Celtic, Ravel Morrison, the bad boy of United, West Ham and now Lazio, and Wes Brown, who is somehow clinging onto a career at Sunderland, all played football for Fletcher Moss.

There are still a large number of players gracing the United academy who have ties to Fletcher Moss. Should they, or any of the more established league players, be forced to give back?

While Brown and Welbeck have probably earnt enough throughout their careers to give back to their childhood clubs and not worry about putting food on their table, Morrison is unlikely to have much money saved — he once appeared in court and his lawyer told the judge that he had no money to pay for damages — and Rashford and Blackett are still on relatively low wages in football terms.

Now the two youngsters could still give back something, it’s not like academy players at United are on a pittance, but right now they may have the mentality that they are not in a stable financial situation to donate money to Fletcher Moss.

Let’s be honest, football fans see more and more youngsters driving flash cars, wearing designer watches and spending absurd amounts of money in nightclubs.

I’m not saying Rashford and Blackett are like that but for some of the Premier League youngsters who live that multimillionaire lifestyle, instead of a new Range Rover, that money could be better invested into a struggling local club.

But another side to this argument is that with Premier League sides grabbing kids at a younger and younger age and developing them in their system for well over a decade in some case, some have argued that these local clubs don’t really do much.

And that is no offence to them. Just a cold reality. Rashford spent two years at Rangers and has so far spent 11 years harnessing his talents at United.

And it is the same for a lot of current Premier League players, they spend a few months at Sunday League clubs and the majority of their childhood in the protective bubble of academies.

What did they really learn from an environment where they were head and shoulders above the rest?

You look at how some Spanish players banded around Real Oviedo when they were going under and the argument could be made that it makes more sense to save a club that size, rather than a kids one.

When Oviedo — in the second tier of Spanish football — almost folded in 2013 fans were urged to buy shares.

Thousands did, not just in Spain, but Oviedo has produced a large number of stars and when hearing about the club’s financial crisis, Santi Cazorla, Juan Mata and Michu all purchased shares to save the club.

“Mata, Cazorla and I have all bought shares, but it would be wrong of me to say how much. We just wanted to try to help save the club we all played for,” said Michu at the time.

“It’s my local club, a club I love, so I hope it will be enough.”

Personally, I feelany club in financial trouble should get the help it needs, be it Fletcher Moss or Real Oviedo.

Just because Oviedo has a larger fan base, doesn’t mean it deserves to continue any more than a local club in Manchester.

No-one knows how many promising footballers Manchester will lose if Fletcher Moss is forced to close its door.

England, and on a much larger scale Britain, already struggles to find top-quality homegrown players.

Lets hope the FA and Manchester United pitch in to save a club that they have benefitted greatly from over the last few decades.