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You need only 30 peole to make a national team. If that 30 plays well in the Premier League and 10 in Champions League finals, but unable to win matches at international level, problem is not with talent pool, but with the desire to win.

People always comes with lame excuses. Even if we have 150 great players, we can pick only 30 and only 11 to 15 will play.

English back born is not strong enough, we need to ask John Terry, why it is so?

Another situation where the UK should plead a special case. If the Welsh, Scottish and Irish players are classified the same as the Spanish, Brazillians, Portuguese etc, I can't help thinking they're going to be squeezed out. The likes of Richard Dunne or even Ryan Giggs may be less attractive if the club has to drop a "real" foreigner to make room for them? Would e.g. Cardiff also have to have mostly Welsh players, if they were in a league covered by these quotas?

I'm sorry but I think you are missing the point. The point seems to be made (not an original one), that the influx of foreign players are 'suffocating' the english players, that they are somehow stopping English players from appearing in the top flight. I'm an Arsenal fan, and it is my club who you highlight as the club which has played the least amount of English players in the Premiership this season. However, your stat about the club is totally misleading. You fail to mention, 1) the amount of players playing in the Premiership who came through the Arsenal youth system. It is not that Arsenal hate English players, rather that they simply weren't good enough. Look at Sagna, who we signed last season for Β£7 million, has been the right back for every Premiership team of the season picked for 2007/08, in his FIRST season here. There is not an English right-back around who is as good as Sagna. Should we put the quality of our team in order to help a second rate English player? I think not.

Also, if you look at England teams through the age groups, Arsenal have a high percentage of representatives. The benefits of Wenger's youth system are just starting to show. Why only now, you may ask, it is because it is only now that the players who have been trained at a very young age to Wenger's technical standards are beginning to make it into the older age groups. Lansbury, Gibbs, Wilshere, they are England players of the future. Show the figures for club representatives at younger England levels, I think it will show a fairer representation of the true reality. Other clubs should be learning from the way Arsenal train young players, not criticising them…

This stats are deceptive as they do not take into consideration how many starts each player made. I would also like to see what proportion of those that started were from the UK and Ireland.

The table also deliberately seems to have been deliberately chopped off at 160 to make the drop appear much more dramatic.

34% of the pl is english. what about the british percentage? I'd be more interested in that. Does this hypothesis mean that Ryan Giggs is a foreigner? Since when was Robbie Keane considered to be foreign? 100 years ago scottish, irish and welsh players were playing in the english league. It's different in the main part of Europe, where the borders of most countries separate two language-speaking countries with a completely diverse culture. All in all, I'd like to see a British percentage. Like that pl spokesman says, there were loads of english players in teams yet england were woeful in the 70s and 80s. And what about Spain? They boast one of (if not the) finest leagues in the world, with Barca and Real, yet their national team, despite their current world ranking and impressive squad, have won just one european championship.

enjoyicecoldcesc you are quick to back Arsenal up here. The article mentions them once, and one of their players. That's exactly as much as Liverpool were mentioned.

By the way Wes Brown an Englishman was Right-Back for the most sucessful defence in the Premier League this season. Arsenal's defence was the weakest in the top four.

UEFA/the FA better not rush into things, it could be handled very go if it is rushed. United players like Giggs, Fletcher, O'Shea are hardly considered "foreign" but technically they are. What about players Andorra would they be classes as foreign players in Spain? Maybe just upping the quotes a little for European competitions might have an affect. Maybe, just maybe the problem is the English just aren't that good as working as a national "TEAM", with too many individuals.

Our population is 1.5 times that of Spain, equal to France and Italy and 80% of Germany's and, apart from Turkey, significantly bigger than all the rest. Common sense tells us that we should be able to match these countries in terms of finding and developing talent. After all, the pool we are fishing in is either a little bigger, the same size or just slightly smaller than that of our European neighbours.
The question needs to be answered why we don't bring sufficient young men forward with the necessary qualities.
Why do so many - if not all - of the English players that do make it come from a narrow stratum of society; in marketing speak, the Ds and Es?
Why do so many talented youngsters who show great promise at school decide against a career in professional football?
No one would argue that the people that come from the English game now managing and coaching in England, are over-endowed intellectually. Would you let your son be mentored by a Redknapp, a Warnock or an Allardyce?
Why are the ones that do come through - like Wayne Rooney, Theo Walcott - so expensive, so early on?
Why do we continue to close and sell-off grass sport pitches and discourage schools from providing competitive sport?
It's no good looking at the team sheets of Premier clubs and complaining; we need to find out why it is the way it is - and fix it.

Ironically it was because teams in the SPL nearly went bust though foreign imports that led to more Scottish players getting a game on a regular basis.

In the group stages of this year's Champions League there were more Scottish players from our two clubs than English players from the Big Four, and that experience has translated into better performances from the Scottish national side.

And don't forget that when there was a quota system of just three foreign players in 92/93 Rangers were just one goal away from making the CL final.

The situation in England is quite different, however, as the EPL is too big and has too much money to bow to Sepp Blatter's will, and EU employment law is on their side.

Ask the punters what they would rather have: a top class product with world class players on TV or in their stadia very week and a Champions League that makes the Euros and World Cup look tawdry by comparison, OR a mediocre national league with ordinary players who would not necessarily do any better at international level?

In your report you stated:

English clubs are more reliant on foreign talent than their European counterparts

Couldn't you replace 'reliant on' with 'attractive to' and put a completely different spin on the same numbers. Is one statement more true than the other? Should it be your writers place to tell the reader what is the right amount of english players in the premiership?

As a West Ham fan it is pleasing that this issue is being raised. The club has long since been investing in English youth and just looking at the top clubs reveal how successful it has been over the years.

It is disappointing for all English fans to see English teams such as Arsenal regularly turn out teams with no English players and it seems a contradiction to rave about a youth policy and young England players when the players are never get a chance to break into the first team.

Maybe the challenge of stepping up to the premier league will inspire better English players in the future. There's little point forcing more players in if the overall standard of play will then drop, make better players not a backdoor.

On another note I thought the initial bar chart was incredibly misleading, by setting the baseline at 160 it looks from a glance that the number of players has halved, instead of around 10%, trying to talk up the story a bit maybe?

A better (but likely less extreme and thus less headline-worthy) measure would be the number of minutes played by english players vs. other UK players vs. non-UK players.

There were a greater proportion of English players in the top flight when we failed to qualify for the World Cup under Graham Taylor (see the table in the bbc article below).



The top flight of English football is the best it has ever been and we should be celebrating the diversity within our league rather than trying to limit the number of foreign players!

Unfortunately in the current climate clubs need instant success. Therefore, those at the top are not prepared to take a chance on an unproven English player in the way they used to. Remember all the players who came from clubs like Crewe? This is not really happening any more and exceptional lower league players only tend to be signed by the Premier League's relegation fodder.

Also, for some reason, English (and to a lesser extent British) players are massively overpriced. Last season David Nugent cost Β£6m while Darren Bent cost Β£16.5m. Meanwhile Santa Cruz was picked up for just Β£3.5 and Eduardo da Silva for Β£10m. With price differences like these, why would any club with common sense buy British?

"The graph with the vertical axis not starting at zero is a standard way of displaying this kind of information, the meaning of which should be clear as long as it is clearly labeled, which we think it is."

It may be 'standard' (God knows where though), but is very poor practice. At the very least the vertical axis should have a break in it.

Just a few points:

The 1979 Arsenal cup winners (3-2 against Man Utd) had 4 English qualified players in their line up. The 1983 league Cup and Fa Cup winners, Liverpool and Man Utd, had 4 English players in their line ups.

The difference was their 'foreigners' wer Scots and Irish.

Can anyone tell me how Sepp Blatter could possibly get the UK government to prohibit those from one part of the UK working in another part?

Additionally we see in other sports, such as cricket and rugby fast tracking of players becoming 'naturalised' and choosing which nationality they want, Almunia has said he wants to become England qualified, surely all that will happen is that future Drogbas will become 'English' or 'Spanish' and their own nations will suffer?

All these headlines in papers about the foreign invasion, could be drawn straight from a BNP pamphlet!

Remind me how many World Cups/European Championships did we win during the period when there were few foreigners in the top flight?

I'd also add; we had a starstudded squad in Germany '06; they flopped. ditto '02, '98, '94

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

If England want more players playing first team football then it is up to the players themselves and not the clubs in my opinion. Steve Sidwell is an often used example of the player reducing his chances and not his club.

Quite simply more english players need to move abroad and that will improve the national teams's chances in international competitions. I don't doubt for one minute that Owen Hargreaves's performance in the World Cup 2006 was aided by the fact that he played his club football in Germany and so was more used to the foreign football style. A player like Sidwell is going to be far better off if he moved to a mid-division Spanish club than not playing at all at an english one.

People need to stop coming up with lame excuses about premier league lacking english players. The premier league is full of great players if england want more of there players in the league the players need to step up there game. In my opinion if you want to talk about why english players are not starting in the premier league is because they have not been expose to foreign football so english players need to go out and play in la liga, serie A and other foreign leagues to improve there game and maybe the national team could reach there goal of being the number one team on planet which everybody knows that they are capable of.

I have to agree with the majority of the comments on here. There is nothing wrong with the number of English players in the PL.

Surely Capello only looks at a maximum of 60 players who could make the squad? The real issue is the qulaity of players. Our current crop, the so-called 'Golden Generation', are very talented. The just need to gel together as a proper team.

The only problem I can see, is if the future talent dries up. But looking at the Under 21 side and there is some great potential there. These players can only benefit by playing and training with the world's top players.

My position is that the number of foreign players in the prem has little or no baring on the performance of the national side. If anything, I think it improves it. That said, the England team has underperformed on a massive scale for a considerable amount of time. However, IMO the problem doesn't lie with the quality of players or even the manager; the problem is with morale.

Every time England play, the next day the papers slate them. No matter what the result was, they find fault with the players and the manager. Sven's reign was one of the best ever in terms of results yet he was made so unpopular he was axed by the FA even before he had played his last tournament. Afterwards, when Maclaren took over, I even read headlines calling for his return - by the same people who had got him sacked.

When players start thinking how important it is not to mess up, it negatively affects their game. In the same way, if the crowd are cheering them on, they play better. That's part of the reason playing at home is considered to be an advantage.

What we need to do is get behind our national team and forgive any mistakes that are made. If people get into the mindset that only perfection is good enough then we will always fail, no matter what.

Ultimately, to win a tournament, we need a shift in attitude of sports writers as these are the people who the public listen to. This is near impossible task, however, as they generally sell more papers when being negative about England and newspapers have shareholders to think about.

I reckon there are issues about coaching standards, schools of excellence etc. which sould be addressed in order to maximise the chances of English lads making the grade.

However, at teh end of the day, the England Team put out against the USA started with 6 or 7 players who were in the CL final, bolstered by the likes of Gerrard. If you can't make something out of this sort of resource there's something not right about the players attitudes to international footaball and/or the coaching/management of the England set up.

For me the biggest problem is that players are so focused on club commitments - to the point that they act like they're doing everyone a favour by turning up to friendly matches. Hopefully Capello will sort this and make it clear that playing for England is a huge honour and that places will be reserved for players who graft for their place, work well together etc.

I don't think we're very far from success cause, like the CL, the difference between success and failure is very small. Hopefully a fully in form Gerrard playing off Barry and a few other small improvements can make the difference.