http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/ju...ndfootballteam1

Read this and posted the following reply to the Guardian.

I was amazed by your two articles by David Conn about English players in the Premiership. It seemed highly biased to one point of view - that the failure of the England team to qualify was down to the presence of too many foreign players in the Premiership.

The first article was titled 'Chairman Richards comes clean: the Premier League is damaging England.' Well, that may be Richards' opinion (and that of David Conn) but it is only an opinion and it is being portrayed as 'fact' and something that Richards was deliberately hiding. Then in the article, the concept is backed up because McLaren said the failure to qualify was because there were not enough English players to choose from. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he, in preference to suggesting that it was his fault as manager that we did not qualify. Capello has much the same players available but I do not hear him complaining, but then, Capello is trying to build a team rather than just find the best 11 players like McLaren and Sven did. Capello has spotted the fact that football is a team game - Italy did not win the World Cup because they had the best individuals, they won it because they had the best team.

We then have a statistic of 34% of the players in the top flight being English. You can take a negative view of this as people often do, but I would pitch it the other way. The Premiership is effectively an open market with money to buy anyone. Despite that, over a third of the players come from England, competing on an equal basis in the football market place. That does not sound like failure to me.

So the second article claiming it is 'blindingly obvious' is far from the truth. I support the Arsenal, where Arsene Wenger is accused by some of not liking English players. Not so. He does his job as club manager and chooses the best players, wherever they are from. The issue with English players is often a question of price. Take, for instance, Wright-Philips. If he had stepped out onto the Arsenal turf, he would have brought the house down, but when clubs like Chelsea are prepared to pay out 25 million so he can warm the bench for the season, it is unrealistic to expect other clubs to try and outbid.

Arsene Wenger is right in saying that if the clubs are forced to field English players not based on merit, it will not improve the standard of football. Players like Theo Walcott get their chance because they are good enough and that is the way to improve the standard. It is also the case that if a quota system is put in place, then the rich clubs will buy all of the best English players and the lower clubs will have an even harder job trying to find players to fill their quota - the rich-poor divide in football will increase.

The England team has not done as well as it might for a number of years - since before the Premiership was formed. Bobby Robson's side did the best since Alf Ramsey's time, but I put that down to Bobby Robson's ability as a manager, not down to players coming up from a lower division (even though that is what Wenger did with Walcott). The FA and McLaren might need excuses for not being in Euro 2008 - funny how it is just at the start of the competition that they are churning our reasons for us not being there, but taking their reason as gospel is not the way forward.

Saw the article being propagated (again) on SSN, clearly a big load of hairy balls. :good:

Also, your response is spot on.

Well said, Coney.

very well written, coney

who'd you hire as ghostwriter?

:goodpost: Coney

:haha:

Seriously though, good one Coney :good:

:tiphat:

Very kind. The annoying thing is that it was not till later in the day that I realised I should have sent it to a different part of the Grauniad. I'd sent it to their general email (where it will get forwarded to the sports section) rather than create an ID on their web site and posted it there, where it might have appeared on their online pages. Ah well. At least the guy who wrote the article will see it and know I think he's a tw@t. ;)

people aren't interested in logic when it comes to this debate though (e.g. your point about a english league with more english players having produced a national team that has actually achieved very little for the last 40 years)

nor are they interested in the fact that certain clubs damage the england team by buying an englishman for his passport and then not playing him (chelski) or by being rubbish (tottenham)

nor the impending boom as improved academies produce better players - several arsenal players included - which will mean a better england team and more english players in the league

all they want are quotas which for me are too blunt a tool.