[Dancer+]

SOURCE
A fairly mediocre score from Arsenal at 0.34 :eek: Which is a full two points behind anyone else...Well done to Villa in particular, who play good English talent.

Does this make Arsenal a disgrace to english football?
Plus, who knows what problems this will cause in the future with UEFA's proposed 'six-and-five' strategy (http://news.bbc.co.u...ope/7421348.stm). Limiting the amount of foreign players in the team to five. This strategem may come into place in the next 3 or 4 years. Time for Wenger to change his policy, I think.

Thoughts, and any gloating?

[caladanbrood]

Well if he goes for this 6and5 thing (which is, by any sort of employment law, completely illegal), everyone is in trouble excpet villa and west ham, by the look of it.

But Arsenal only have two Englishmen in their squad, I'm not suprised they play less than one every other game to be honest. It's shockingly bad for english football.

[Yellow]

Football's about money, not about playing English players in the English Premiership. Clubs will play who they want, until they're forced to do something else. I'm not saying this is the way it should be, just the way it is. (Brood is right, btw, this attempt to force a nationality upon your workforce is, or at least should be, illegal).

Anyone who thinks this 6/5 bull will help the England team is deluding themselves. What it will do is serve to further inflate the already-ridiculous transfer fees for English-born players, as they will become a rare commodity.

If this rule comes into play, then Jermaine Defoe will be going for £40million, because he's one of only three English players who can score a goal now and then, and all the big teams are short four homegrowns for the new season.

[Sir Thursday]

I agree with Yellow - forcing teams to have English players on them isn't going to help. What the England team needs is more top players playing in foreign leagues, so that they gain experience playing in different systems against different styles. And inflating the prices of English players is most definitely not the way to achieve that.

Sir Thursday

[Dancer+]

Incidentally we are all agreed on the key facts, this proposal harms premiership football and the integrity of the sport. I think the youth setup could be improved for English talent, this would go some way to introducing better talent into the system.

Although I do slightly disagree with the Arsenal strategy, I do realise that there is nothing fair that can be done to change the situation. Plus, it was an interesting statistic and I want to see TT's response

[polishgenius]

Yeah, the proposal is bollocks and aims at the symptom not the cause. I agree with Thursday and Dancer - what the English game needs is a complete overhaul of the youth academy system in the country and more English players willing to play overseas.

Interestingly, Arsenal probably have the best youth academy setup and I can see this bearing out in a few years (there's already decent players coming through, though they haven't stuck for Arsenal yet they're bearing fruit for the national game as a whole- Bentley, Upson, the like of those). Bear in mind, he rebuilt their academy from the ground up when he arrived. He's been there twelve years, if you give four or so years for an overhaul to settle in then those who are eighteen or so now (and apparently that's a really good group of English youngsters) are those who will have been feeding into the system at the start of that.

[caladanbrood]

West Ham's youth academy is considerably better than Arsenal's - just look at the players they've produced! Quite a decent percentage of the current England squad.

[polishgenius]

True, but I'm on about the players who are just coming through the system at Arsenal. Only time will tell if I'm right or talking bollocks.

[caladanbrood]

Fair enough. I've not seen anything to suggest it's any better than other clubs' at the moment though

[Battalion]

The problem for Arsenal is that they strive to remain a top four side on a tighter budget than Chelsea, Man United or Liverpool. English players are already overpriced, the good ones rediculously so. Two years ago Arsenal tried to buy Curtis Davies from West Brom, who were in the Championship at the time, and couldn't get him for a penny less than twelve million. The guy was a young up and coming center-half with no experience and no caps, and they wanted silly money for him. It is a far cheaper alternative to go to Europe/Africa to get decent prospects at a better price.

For further proof of over inflated prices for Englishmen, see Owen Hargreaves -- a good player, no doubt -- United forked out mega bucks for him, and left him on the bench for most of the season or played him out of position.

I also think that Arsenal's problem with overpriced English players is slightly self inflicted, because of the way they bring players through their youth system. Wenger has long been praised for his abiltity to find talented youngsters, but by bringing them from all over the world to Arsenal, he undoubtedly must stiffle the groath of actual "homegrown" talent, the result of which is the price booming on any and all adverage English players, because of their rarity.

[Cougar]

Whilst I agree that the proposal to limit foreign players is illegal (unless Blatter gets his ruling on football as an exceptional trade which would potentially exempt it from laws concerning the free movement of players within the EU) and also that the English academy/youth development system needs looking at I think you are all making a fundamental error in your thinking (which I’ll come back to).

First up look at what Wenger said some time ago: (to paraphrase) the reason he has so few English players is that they lack the technical ability of foreign players. I feel this is a prejudice he holds and it is reflecting in the Arsenal team and youth development system. If he has been there for 10 years, then the youth system should have been modified and improved at Arsenal to pick up players of 8-10 years old and train them in the way Wenger wishes them to play football. Logically if he has recognised this problem and tackled it, the Arsenal youth system would now be producing at least the odd quality English player (rather than a stream of foreigners poached in their teens). Furthermore the only English Arsenal player to come through the youth system of any quality is Bentley and Wenger did not fancy him (I’ll reserve judgement on this since Bentley’s attitude has been questioned)

The success of the French system in the last decade was that teams were forced not to have a cap on foreigners, but a certain number of ‘homegrown’ players included in their teams/squads. If this were introduced and the rules on poaching players from other peoples academy set ups tightened then the natural option would be for most Premier league sides to be fielding several British players at least as squad members (you’d never manage to restrict it to English as the boundaries within the UK are too blurred)

The idea that we do not have enough players plying their trade abroad is totally bogus: Italy have proved this time and again in the last 25 years. I’d perhaps agree that English football can be somewhat tactically naïve but this is nothing to do with a lack of players playing abroad. If this was the answer the French national team would struggle due to the number of players who have or still do play in the ‘technically inferior Premier League.

The main faulty assumption is that limiting the number of foreigners would lower the standard of the league. In any situation we would still be able to attract the best foreigners. The idea of the system would be to cull the number of average foreign players seeping into the game. So Didier Drogba, Ronaldo, Henry etc would not be eliminated, Eric Djemba-Djemba, Kleberson, Igor Stepanovs, Paulo Ferriera, Asier Del Horno to name but a few would never make it through. The main reason that the Premier league is overflowing with crap foreign players stifling the opportunities of young British talent is they are cheap, for some unfathomable reason English clubs believe they can charge enormous premiums for English players. I’m gonna call this point the Nicky Butt/Phil Neville argument. If you scour the championship and lower premier league clubs you will find buckets loads of players with the natural ability of these 2. However through playing in a good side at a high level they have bettered themselves, if there were less average foreign players in the Premiership more sides would be forced to play average English players who would improve, I’m not saying the first 11 of the national side would necessarily be better, but there would be some competition for squad places and every once in a while a Danny Mills or similar average player would hit a purple patch and come into contention putting pressure on the complacent incumbent.

[Thelomen Toblerone]

I just disagree hugely with you Cougar. If English kids had the talent and were coached correctly to play at the highest level, I dont think clubs would go out of their way to stop them, and the fact players like Phil Neville and Nicky Butt lasted at Man U and are still in the prem is because they are grafters and the league wasnt as technically good as it is now. They were taught to work their socks off and get stuck in, and that simply isnt the way football's being played now- you cant get away with half the physicality you used to.

If you see interviews with english Arsenal youth players (and I know Henri Lansbury so I can tell you from experience), they say that when they go off to play for the England U-whatever sides, they are forced to play a style of football that discourages their technical ability, and they have to play long ball or more old-school english football. We have plenty of kids coming through the ranks who will be given their chance in the first team soon, plenty of them are English, and plenty of them have been taught to play the way Arsenal play. Players like Randall, Gibbs, Lansbury and Simpson are all good examples.

At the end of the day, the prices for English players are over-inflated, I dont think anyone can argue with that. Arsenal are int he situation where they are expected to stay in the top 4 while not having the money to spend and match the other top 3 teams.

Look at how much Liverpool Chelsea and Man U have spent in recent years and compare it to Arsenal, and you have to admit that if we'd been forced to buy English players, there's no way we could afford to stay up there.

A while back we wanted Curtis Davies from West Brom. An uncapped, young, unproven CB in the Championship, and yet because he's English WBA wanted at least £10mil. Now, do you pay that, or do you go and get someone like Kolo Toure for pennies from Africa?

If the rule does come in for English rather than homegrown players, we'll get silly things like people paying £40mil for Jermain Defoe, because he's one of the few English players that can score a goal. You'd end up with the all best English players at the top few richest sides, and the crap left playing for the others, making an even wider gap.

And if it's homegrown, then Arsenal have no worries at all as players like Clichy, Bendtner, Fabregas, Senderos, Djourou etc will qualify anyway.

[caladanbrood]

You stole Fabregas from a spanish academy (can't remember if it was Barca or Real) when he was 17 (16?) I don't think that counts as homegrown...

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Yes it does, provided the player has played for the team for 3 years before his 21st birthday past the age of 16 (i.e ruling out being homegrown for 2 clubs).

We got him at age 16, so he's definitely ours. Mwahahaha!!!

[caladanbrood]

Details details. You stole him

[Cougar]

Well I don't think you disagreed with me that much...

Thelomen Toblerone;317556 said:

Yes it does, provided the player has played for the team for 3 years before his 21st birthday past the age of 16 (i.e ruling out being homegrown for 2 clubs).

Like I said if the 'homegrown' rule is to mean anything then this dispicable poaching by the top sides would have to stop.(Pique, Fabregas, Rossi etc were all poached)

You are of course totally wrong about Butt and Neville, they would both still be useful in the Man Utd team and Ferguson only shipped them out at their request. I happen to know Neville Neville, so this is fact.

I agree about the style of English coaching it is totally inadequate, I guess we will see if Arsenal are comitted to developing English players. Like I already said if they are we will see the fruits of it in the next couple of years, if they don't start coming through it's either bias, bad luck or that the Arsenal academy is shit and I know the last one isn't true

[Battalion]

My commiserations for knowing Neville Neville.

[caladanbrood]

My comiserations to Neville Neville for knowing you

[Optimus Prime]

I don't see how making teams in England have English players isn't some sort of discrimination? This makes no sense to me, I guess it'd be like NBA teams over here each having a mandatory European player....weird.

[Cougar]

There is nothing unusual about it; until the mid 90s it was a rule that you could only have 3 foreign players in European competitions. It's totally illegal under EU law now but the idea is 2 fold:

1. It would improve the national teams of Scotland, England, Spain, Germany etc. This is desirable because these countries were once core markets for international football competitions. England for example have not qualified for Euro 2008 which is bad from UEFAs perspective because they have massive support and now a great deal fewer people in England will watch Euro 2008 which causes problems for TV revenues, advertising cash etc.

2. Other leagues like France, Portugal, Holland etc would be a higher standard because players who were good but not excellent would stay, they wouldn't have to import mediocre foreigners etc. Consequently their top club sides would be more competitive in European competition.

Well that's the theory anyway.