Three Premier League footballers have called on the game's authorities to do more at grassroots level.

Dave Kitson at Stoke City, Aston Villa's Curtis Davies and the West Ham United midfielder Jack Collison have sent letters to the Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, the Football League chairman, Greg Clarke, and Sir Trevor Brooking, the director of football development at the Football Association, asking them to review their approach to youth development programmes run by full-time non-league clubs, the majority of whom receive no financial help and are struggling to make ends meet.

"I would be more than happy to represent this side of the table," Kitson told the Guardian. "I have got no axe to grind or anything personal to gain. I just think this is a real chance to do some good at a level of football which is often overlooked but has had tremendous success in bringing footballers through over a sustained period of time and to all levels of the footballing pyramid.

"We are not looking for an argument or any public recognition or 'look what I did'. We're looking at it from a point of view that this is where we came from and that the funding problems may have escaped attention of the wider football world. This is a chance to show that we keep English football in order at all levels. No one tier is more important than any other. Yes, one tier may produce more money than the others put together but football is not more important to the community of Manchester than it is to the community in Cambridge."