There has been some talk of late of the benefit of having more English players playing in Premier League teams. It is a story that continues over time, and takes many forms – all depending on the latest bit of news.
But there has been a wide range of stories of this type over the years and they are worth considering. Here are just four of them.
1: We need a British spine to the team
Quite why the centre forward, central midfielder, one or two of the centre backs and the keeper benefit from being English or British I have never quite worked out, although I do remember the days in the dim and distant past when English managers would deliberately pick a tall if not particularly skilful centre forward on the grounds that foreign goalkeepers always got scared if they saw a big lumbering England number 9 heading their way. It was all nonsense of course, but it kept England managers and the newspapers happy for years.
2: We need more British managers in the Premier League
This is a current talking point as the newspapers have started to add up just how many times an English manager has won very much in recent times.
The Independent recently suggested that of 70 trophies won since the Premier League broke away from the Football League only six have been won under an English manager and only two in this century. Steve McClaren won the Football League Cup with Middlesbrough in 2004 and the media favourite Arry the Red won the FA Cup with Portsmouth – although it is probably best not to remember what happened to the club’s finances afterwards.
The last Englishman to win the league was Howard Wilkinson with Leeds United (who have also gone through administration and collapse subsequently, just as Portsmouth, since that achievement.
As matters stand the only English managers in the top flight next season will be Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew and Steve Bruce, and that assumes that Pardew keeps his job. Of course we did have many more England managers in the past, but that didn’t seem to mean that anything was very different in terms of our ability to produce good English players or win international tournaments.
Arsène Wenger in 1996 is deemed to have been the man who started the whole foreign manager thing off, and indeed it has hard these days to credit Tony Adam’s comment to the effect that “He’s French, what does he know about English football?” was meant to be a serious comment. But Arsenal revolutionised football in England, and prepared the way for Premier League domination of world football.
The other part of the equation was that ownership of the clubs changed and foreigners came in to run the club. Foreign owners brought foreign managers, who brought in foreign assistants, and foreign scouts. As a result the England team are these days as likely to have a foreign manager as an English one.
The lack of English managers in the top flight is worrying for the Football Association. Not only are foreign managers more likely to buy, and play, foreign players – thereby reducing opportunities for English players – their preponderance reduces the FA’s own options when making an appointment.
3: There should be more England players in the Premier League
So are there any benefits in having English players in the Premier League? Well yes there are.
a) English players join the club speaking good English (by and large) and so there are no communication problems
b) English players don’t have to travel to foreign parts in order to play meaningless internationals (unless England choose to play away). Certainly there is no case of having home matches on the other side of the world
c) English players are used to English tax and so don’t start demanding additional payments to cover the rates of tax paid here.
d) England usually get knocked out of the finals international competitions fairly early on, so don’t keep playing until the very last matches, although they do get to the finals quite often.
4. But what about as actual players?
Arsenal’s English players are Gibbs, Jenkinson, Wilshere, Walcott, Oxlade Chamberlain. We also have Ramsey who is not English but has the benefit of being English without the problem of playing in the finals of international competitions.
So what now. Should we sign more English players?
There are disadvantages with signing non-British players, most particularly if it takes the player a while to become acclimatised to English life, the language and the style of play. If they are EU nationals then there is no problem with the passport, but players from the rest of the world can find themselves out on loan in Spain or France for a while, so that they can get dual nationality.
However there are advantages. And if it were possible to choose between two identical players one of whom was British and the other Argentinian, then the chances are the British player would be a better bet.
But will we sign any this summer? Few, I suspect. Because of course players are not identical, and in the end there are not that many good English players around.
5. English players don’t travel well.
Of course some English players have played overseas with distinction, but not that many, and that means that one is less likely to get a good price when the player moves on, because by and large he will stay in England. The likes of Henry and Vieira could have their pick of Europe when they moved on, because they were already multi-lingual. How many English players playing in England are multi-lingual. Not so many I suspect, and that itself raises a problem
6. It’s always been like this.
Actually no it hasn’t. Arsenal started out in the league playing four or five Scottish players in their team. And in the 19th century, the only internationals that were played in which we participated were games across the British Isles. So you could say that from the start our club has used foreigners. All we are doing now is carrying on a tradition.