Tuesday 27 May 2008

Get ready for the usual anti-Arsenal onslaught

BBC Sport has done some research and found that the number of English players in the Premiership has dropped to an all-time low.

There were 498 players that started matches last season and only 170 of them were English. Around 34.1%.

My fellow Gooners, prepare for the almighty onslaught that will undoubtedly follow this research. There is only one club responsible for this, the evil presence that is Arsenal Football Club.

Over the next few days be ready to hear how Arsenal are ruining the English game and it's our fault that the Premiership is over-run with the foreign invasion, the REAL reason for England's demise!

The best way to conquer these stats? Put a cap on clubs, allowing them only five foreigners in the starting eleven. Well thats according to Sepp Blatter.

My opinion on that is to tell Blatter to f**k off!

It's not the foreign players faults that England struggle. Its Englands.

By capping teams and forcing them to play six English players isn't going to help the national side. That will only reward average English players who couldn't get in the side before, so all Fabio Cappello gets is more English players to choose from, but shit ones!

Sure there are a bigger number of foreign players playing in the Premiership, but if an English player is good enough, he will get into the team every week.

Its no good people like David Bentley saying that academies need to be regulated to prevent foreign players hindering homegrown talent.

David, you obviously have a chip on your shouldier about us releasing you. If you were good enough, you would have had a chance. You wasn't. But you have done alright at Blackburn and Arsenal helped you progress. It's obvious that your ego needs to be massaged from time to time, so you bring up the foreign situation at Arsenal.

The problem with England is that we aren't taught at an early age how to play football properly. We are taught to win at all costs, not technique.

Thats why England are shit, because we can't compete with our European neighbours technique wise. Not because of numbers.

We have to make a choice. Do we want an average league with an average national side?

Or do we want an exciting league with an average national side?

I choose the latter. It's not Arsenal's fault that England are shit, thats down to English grass-root level.

But over the next few days when the stats are made public I have no doubt that Arsenal will be to blame.

Keep it Goonerish........

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nope, we're wrong.....

Arsenal should have signed Bent for £16 million.

If we had, not only would England have been well on their way to Euro 2008, but also the definite favourites to win it.

Clubs like Tottenham should be shat upon instead of us for seriously overvaluing players like Bent.

Anonymous said...

Yep- that failed argument always makes me laugh. Exactly how many trophies did England win from the 70's through to the birth of the premier league? How many finals did they get to? How likely did we look to win a trophy?

If you want good English players than you want the standard as high as possible- you dont want to lower the standard just so you get a more quantity.

The argument fails in so many ways its untrue. Besides, how many English players in the starting that were developed by Man U did they just win the Euro Cup with? 2 (Brown and a 34 year old Scholes). Its hardly an english conveyor belt of talent, is it?

All producing a cap rule will do is ensure quality is reduced and seeing the established england internationals end up at the big 4 clubs- meaning even less competition. Is that what UEFA want?

Austin Sports Performance Trainer said...

If this were to actually happen, then it would only be fair for FIFA to also impose a salary cap. This is an unfair advantage to sugar daddy teams like Chelsea who inflate the already-inflated price on English players. Tottenham were just fucking stupid (but what else is new) for paying what they did for Bent

Anonymous said...

I remember reading an article on the Arsenal website. It was an interview with the three England U-17 World Cup squad members (I think). Rhys Murphy had words of this effect to say:

"At Arsenal we are taught technique from day one. Then we go away for a month with the England team and all that is taught is long ball, long ball, long ball"

That is the real reason England have not been able to keep up with the likes of France.

Anonymous said...

I know, it's very sad. We have Pennant, Bentley, Ashley Cole and Sidwell who have all been at Arsenal and yet we are attacked for not producing English talent.

It's not our fault they couldn't break into the team or were just greedy ass motherfuckers.

There will be Gibbs, Lansbury, Randall, Simpson, Wilshere and more who are English/British and come up through Arsenal.

Even if they bring it in, we'll be ok, it's Chelsea and others who will have to buy lots of English talent for their teams.

Anyway, Platini said it can't work, so I'm sure it will be a case of, if you have an EU passport you will be ok.

Anonymous said...

0.34 is very bad though, but the youths should be all english born players.

Anonymous said...

bentley might have been good enough for us eventually but he didnt want to wait
wenger wanted to keep him i believe
i dont know wat the guy's problem is, he made his choice, fine so shut up about it

Anonymous said...

I've just heard Bentley is a spuds fan!! lol
And don't worry gooners,am sure the one england/arsenal player walcott will do us proud against u.s.a by scoring the best solo hatrick in the history of not just england football but international football ;)

Anonymous said...

Arsenal are only responsible for upto 14 players each game, what about the others? And seeing as there are no English players in the England squad how can Arsenal be blamed for the failures of the England team?

The bulk of the England players ply their trade at Man U, Chelsea & Liverpool, all of which reached the semi-finals of the champions league this year, yet England can't make the final of the European Championship. So what conclclusions can you draw from that?

1) The foreign players must be carrying their English teamates or

2) When the English players play together for England, the basic techniques they are capable of are obviously inferior to their foreign counterparts!

Anonymous said...

PS I meant to say no English players at Arsenal on the 19.59 post.

Anonymous said...

PS I meant to say no English players at Arsenal on the 19.59 post.

Anonymous said...

Think of all of those great English players Liverpool used to dominate Europe with;Grobelaar, Nicol, Whelan, Lawrensen, Hansen, Souness, Dalglish, Rush. No wonder England were such a power in the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. Those were the days! -Ramgun

Anonymous said...

the usual bs, ireland didnt make it through to the euros either and all our players are int PL or Championship so...

keep up the good work wrighty ill always be back

Anonymous said...

We always get this crap every time something is mentioned about english players. Arsenal produced Ashley Cole, David Bentley, Steve Sidwell, Matthew Upson, Jermaine Pennant, Fabrice Muamba. So whilst they no longer play for Arsenal they are English players produced by the Arsenal academy. England Under 21's, under 19's all have a large contingent of Arsenal players how many of chelsea produced just 1 John Terry all others were bought with Romans Roubles

Anonymous said...

Good article, it's true, we probably will get slaughtered. However a lot of people spout off on this without understanding, or referencing the true problems.

It would be great if there were enough truly world/international class English players to allow all teams to field 6/7 Englishmen per week. There aren't though, and those that are get given ridiculous price tags, which force teams to look abroad. Look at the summer, Sp*rs sign Darren Bent for £16 million, we sign Eduardo for less than half that. Unforeseen horrific injury aside, who did the best bit of business there?

No doubt the likes of Bentley will be given an opportunity to moan about how hard it is to break into the first team at Arsenal. It should be hard, Bentley's not a bad player, but was he worth a place in team ahead of Pires, Ljungberg or Bergkamp? I think not.

I also think the way we train young players in England also contributes to the problem. There isn't enough focus on the technical side of the game, which is why the national team often look out of it's depth against classier sides. The sooner we start producing youngsters of the quality of Cesc, Messi, Ronaldo etc, the sooner we can stop importing them. It's going to take years though.

Anonymous said...

I'd rather have the best talent from France and Spain, then the best talent in England to be honest.

Proven big tournament after big tournament, that English players are not good enough.

You're right about Bentley - what a berk!!!

Anonymous said...

One things with the English,they always look out there for someone or something to blame for all their woes! There are many examples..we will get into that later.....
Am a chemical engineer, therefore i look at things scientifically! 170 players to choose from? Thats massive...that is 15.5 teams...or if u want a full team with 7 subs...it makes it 9 teams! With the standard of the game riased by foreign players, if u cant win with 170 guys who hv managed to get into the team with all the good foreign players.....then something is wrong with the English!

Anonymous said...

I have always said this problem is down to culture.

Look at Brazil, they have enough players to have 4 national sides capable of winning major trophies.

What's the difference? in Brazil most kids are poor or have a low income, instead of buying a playstation or an Xbox a small group of them will chip in and buy a football and just spend all their spare time playing.

In England kids that go to football practice only do so a few hours per week, then some of these kids get together so that they can go around someone's house and play Pro-Evolution or FIFA at home and the irony is that they are likely to play the beautiful game with no tactical knowledge either! even on the console!

I was born in South America and have lived in the UK for almost 12 years, so it's easy for me to spot these differences, over there I was playing football at least 30 hours per week with my friends, as soon as I moved to England this changed to 8 hrs per week at most, 5 of those hours being lunch time at school.

Nothing prevents you from playing 50 hours per week in England but football is not that accessible to kids anymore, kids cant close a road and play football, instead they have to get their parents to drive them to a park, obviously you will need more kids, so this just requires a lot of planning and its hard for kids who do not live next a park or field, its hard for this to become a routine, specially for the parents.

Also parents have to supervise, etc, is just not that simple here, someone gets hurt and you are liable to get sued for neglect, over there you just walk it off.

There are a lot of other factors I can think of but will take me a long time to go through them.

1979gooner said...

spot on wrighty,

the argument of the media does not cut it,

why have england done so little for so many years with a league with a very high percentage of English players?

after all it is only relatively recently that this percentage has dropped down

currently we actually have a much better crop of players to select from than at any time in the nineties,

technique is not taught in England, there is too much emphasis on results and eleven a side from a young age, and not enough smaller games with the emphasis on skill development,

only a few clubs have made the step forward, we need the whole nation to change it's football culture and that won't happen fast

Anonymous said...

Ramgun, those players you mentioned, NONE were england internationals. They are:
Bruce Grobelaar (South Africa),
Steve Nicol (Scotland),
Ronnie Whelan (Ireland),
Mark Lawrensen (Ireland),
Alan Hansen (Scotland),
Greame Souness (Scotland),
Kenny Dalglish (Scotland),
Ian Rush (Wales).

Please get your facts right, I can't believe there are idiots like you around trying to sound like you know so much about football. Again the above proves England rarely produces genuine football talent so stop blaming the Arsenal system!!! - Iceberg

Anonymous said...

If the FA really want a better crop of english talent coming through they should push their millions into schools. They could easily fund a dedicated coach in each area, say between 3 junior schools and i in each senior school. They could run 2-3 training sessions in every school every week. That should at least treble the number of players coming through.
I cant believe the money they waste on prissy promotions and photo oportunities. They dont really want to operate at the proper grass roots and look at it as a 20 year project.

Anonymous said...

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GIVE IT A SHOT!

Summerspur said...

AUSTIN SPORTS NO BRAINER
and all other ignorrant arsewipes that post utter bollox on here.
bent is by no means the best deal ever done but how much did you pay for wiltord all those years ago? not all managers are gifted enough to invest in such brilliant foreign talent such as senerdross, ebola, flapianski, billabong singalong song, denilson and all those kidz that taught us such a valuable lesson in the carlig cup,while cleverly offloading, bently, pennant, upson, muamba and gilbert.aresne knows a girls.
you dont like this recent study because your team is full of the cheating diving foreigners that they highlight. i wont ask you to go back to south of the river where you came from, that would be childish, instead why dont you, your blind manager, your cheating spitting vile cheats of players all piss off to south of the english channel.

Anonymous said...

Summerspur you are a prick fuck off back where you belong twat.
Every new spud you sign is the next Tony Adams, Next Thierry Henry your just jealous twats who know fuck all about football

Anonymous said...

Summerspur are you a racist?

Summerspur said...

no, i am not racist. some of my best friends are welsh. why even throw the racial thing at me because im pro english. dont like the french much though, slippery decietful slime balls who keep surrendering in wars or falling over on football pitches.


al, you got me buddy, im no match for such a cultured inteligent one such as you.

Anonymous said...

Wow, Spuds sure know how to turn things bitter.
Everyone was making descent arguments until you came along. Could "summerspud" please tell me what his original point was in plain english (assuming as an englishman you can speak english and spell correctly).
Without needing to swear and abuse me (or anyone else on this site), what exactly were you trying to say? Or were you just attempting to incite hate? as if there wasn't enough there already.

Anonymous said...

Iceberg - How stupid are you???

The guy who listed the old Liverpool team was being sarcastic to prove a point.

Summerspurs - At least Wiltord was played and scored some goals - Bent has to be the biggest waste of money since the Millenium Dome