I understand there is a similar thread currently going on, but with such a pressing issue, I must get straight to the point. I never understood why the press insisted on trying to delve into Sven's private life during his ternure as boss. OK, he did appear somewhat mercenary - but he was made a scapegoat. Look at his record! Apart from two desperately unlucky defeats against Portugal, an error by David Seaman against Brazil, two last minute strokes of genius from Zinedine Zidane and a dour defeat against N. Ireland, we didn't lose any competitive matches! We sailed through qualifying, and played as a team. In the world cup last year, both Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen, our two key strikers, were effectively injured throughout the tournament. Sven Goran Erikkson did a fine job for England - seemingly passionate or not! Steve McClaren however, just isn't up to the job. I oppposed the appointment from Day 1, and since then - my doubts and fears have only increased. Scoff all you like, but we need an Alan Pardew or Aidy Boothroyd to take the helm. And soon. I can see us getting through this group, but not on merit - just because we are so much better than anyone else.
Surely the point could have been made on the other thread in the exact same way, no point for another duplicate thread.
- Completely agree, i never had any issues with Sven. We're in a results buisness and 95% of the time he got those results. - I agree he isn't up to the job but he shouldn't be sacked yet, if we fail to qualify then he has to go.
Same thing happened in Scotland, no youth coming through, things have changed now with Scotland rising from about 80 in the World rankings to 16th in under 3 years. .
its the big teams they can get players abroad far cheaper so theyd rather do that han work on there academy bring young players through or even find a few gems in the lower leagues where as the lower league teams who do this like anyone from below the prem is gunna get a look in at the england squad
I don't agree. We still have the talent, but they just aren't producing the goods. Somebody needs to come in and get the best out of these over-paid brats!
It is a mixture of the influx of foreign based players and the complacency of the current crop of England stars. Of course the more foreign players we have the less chance the English players will get but there are some that are good enough to keep foreign players out of their sides. However these players get complacent at their achievements and fail to deliver when the country relies on them. We have talent, but for god's sake why don't we show it sometimes?
if we limited foreign players is there not a danger that sub standard english players will be filling out teams which might lead to a drop in quality of competitivenes leading to malais and actual drop in qulaity of british players. no one gets good by setting the bar low afterall. for example lets just say toure wasn't allowed in england and so arsenal had to keep and play upson. you can't exactly claim that would of made the national squad better.
I think that's a very strenuous counter-argument. If you were to limit the number of foreigners in the country, it would encourage English players to ocme through the ranks. Afterall, clubs would have little choice. Of course, UEFA's new youth rules, coming into force will employ similar rulings anyway. The main thing FIFA need to introduce at the moment, is a salary cap for players, also a transfer cap for the tycoon's (eg. Abramovich) who are effectively ruining the game.
theres nothing to say that those players would be any good. all its doing is changingg things from the demand side and not the supply. instead of great new footballers coming through, it may just be that players who would of played at wigan go to man utd, and people who would of played for lincoln instead play for preston, if you catch my drift.
But you're missing my very point! I am suggesting that such regulations would encourage the growth of English footballers. These players would improve, and come on - through the ranks.
i think a salary/transfercap would be unfair, as you shouldnt be able to stop someone paying someone high wages, but the FA/UEFA/FIFA could have a 'tax' on it where money would go to the roots and lower leagues
how would limiting foreign players mean better or more players come though. there is nothing intrinsic in your argument to suggest better players would come through. how do you know players at a lower level wouldn't instead be forced to make the step up in order to fill in the spaces at the top, instead meaning new players only come in at the very bottom of the ladder? for example imagine there are 30 jobs for players in the premiership. following regulation, 20 places are vacant. the response of the premiership is then to draft in 20 players from the championship. the response of the championship in the face of this exodus of world class england team material talent is to draft in 20 players from league 2 e.t.c. i'm not saying its a likely outcome, but is a possibility worth considering.
I am not saying we should limit foreign players at all, I am just saying that the reason for our poor performances cannot be put down to solely 1 thing. Playing with the best players around is going to make the English players better, but if those English players become world class but cannot manage the level of effort that is required then we have issues.
we could try and put it down to it being soley one thing. mclaren! aside from that i just don't think we're as good as we think. why else would crouch have gone to a world cup afterall?
My mate and I were talking about this yesterday and tried to find alternative English forwards who may be able to solve our goal-scoring shortage. We could not come up with many Prem players and most of them do get even start regularly, try it yourselves. Please remember that our King is Jamaican.
you cant keep rooney out of the team and there are alot of promising strikers coming up through the ranks...Lita, Nugent...i have to agree with you on the lack of english strikers...we may have crouch :dismay: and johnson :rant: and i do think we are missing Joe Cole as an attacking winger/supporting role! I just dont know what to do!
Cheers mate, will be drinking at Gatwick at around 4am tomorrow morning. Will try and remember to post a blog of my trip
I'm not sure if i want them to turn up. I said before the Israel game that i was in a quandry. Desparately wanting McLaren out but of course wanting to win. Unless we completely muller them by more than 5 Mclaren has to go. He simply cannot manage or motivate at this level.
Sorry it took me so long to respond, I have been away - on a very pleasant holiday. Fan, you seem to be missing a very obvious point in all this. Either that or you have some exceedingly outlandish and idiosyncratic views. Are you seriously suggesting to me that a player would develop at the same rate for Dunstable as he would for Watford? Or for Grimbsby as he would for Manchester United? I am not suggesting we entirely wipe out foreign imports from the game, just that we limit the aforementioned. With such, certainly some English players would improve in quality as opposed to if there were foreigners taking their place in the team. As you earlier said, what if there was no Kolo Touré at Arsenal? Matthew Upson would have been in their team from the start! He would now be a better player had he have spent his career there, than as he has with going down to The Championship with Birmingham. Welshy, as for your nonsense, you seem to be condoning the insanely astronomical wages that are ruining the spectacle of football currently. Let's get things back into perspective for godness sake! I see your point regarding human rights and a democratic society etc. but some things need laws for people to make the necessary changes, for a better way of life.
that would be to suggest that a player's ability is learned and not innate. if you put an upson-esque player in a good team he will improve as a player is what you are suggesting. all my limited and partial knowledge of sports psychology tells me the bulk of a sportsmans ability it innate. that aside, my main point was that your suggestion does nothing on the supply side of english footballers which i would argue is the more pertinent issue. if a player like upson is to excel in a good team only, then the good teams would need the best quality english players in order to get around the lack of quality due to foreign quotas. given that one england side can barely muster enough players to compete against andorra, how many good english talent would be diluted amongst the top 4 teams? with such a reduction in quality players how would upson have ever had improved if he stayed at arsenal when they're quality in your scenario would not be much better than birminghams at the time? and in the reverse situation, if gerrard is being made to play alongside the likes of pennant and upson on a regular basis, who is to say his game would not drop to meet their level rather than theirs raise to match his. to use your own example, of whether a player at grimbsy would develop in the same way as man utd, i would ask whether you feel mahon would be an england international had he started his career at arsenal? i hope this line of reasoning is perspicuous enough to avoid being labelled idiosyncratic. in the long long long term the english game would benefit as facing such a dip in good players, the big clubs would have to invest more in youth talent and the f.a would do more to persuade kids in the game (which all other factors aside would lead to more rooneys by simple probability) but in the long term we're all dead, so all we would see is decline. and no one likes decline.
Are you seriously suggesting to me that a player would develop at the same rate for Dunstable as he would for Watford? Or for Grimbsby as he would for Manchester United? I'm sorry that I have to keep on making exactly the same point - but the fact of the matter is that an English player is going to improve playing in a top team, against top players! And as I also keep having to repeat, I am NOT suggesting that all foreign players are wiped out from the Premiership, merely that there is a reasonable limit? Do you not understand what I mean by that Fan?
they may develop at different rates but the end product will largely be the same. basically putting paul mayo in man utd means he would of reached his peak and became crap quicker at man utd than he would at watford. how many times am i going to have to state that i'm putting about a hypothetical outcome that whether you agree with or not, is a tangent possibility considering neither of us have any real authority to comment on the nature of ability in an athelete? my main point which you seem to miss every time is that there is nothing beneficial by way of quality of games, quality of english players or the quality of the national team in the short or medium term to come of this. i'm also trying to make it clear that there is nothing intrinsic in your argument to suggest that english players quality would suddenly improve. you keep saying would a player develop at the same rate (again, that just means the speed at which he fulfils an often inate ability) playing for grimbsy than at man utd. to which i will keep replying there is the counter argument of would a player like gerrard be any worse for having started his career at a rubbish club like stoke (or newcastle) where he would be playing day in and day out?
infact the use of paul mayo on reflection sums up what i've been saying. man utd can no longer play evra so what do they do, they recruuit someone like leighton baines, who may or may not turn out to be world class. wigan then have to look down the league and recruit someone like paul mayo. lincoln city then have to get someone else. at what point are you suggesting that a raft of exciting young english talent waiting to make their mark come out of the woodwork and who would they play for? would parents around englanf suddenly think its worth keeping our kid in the football industry because now its a stable career path? would the man utd youth facility suddenly decide that the prodigous english talent it used to spurn because it prefered french people are suddenly worth it? affecting the demand side of the labour market would only affect the supply side after a very very heavy lag and then a subsequent lag would take place before there 9 and 10 year olds became 25 year old english superstars. at which point i would of had to watch well over 15 years of sub standard football. ignoring all that, you are treating this as a case of 'if all else remains the same' which isn't the case. imagine the foreign talent goes to somehere like la liga. we get a drop in television money, they get an increase. a possible result is that we have less to spend on grass roots football (which is where the talent originates) and they have more. this could either mean we become like a dutch league where all our promising home grown talent goes abroad at the first instance, meaning a good national team but a rubbish league, or we become liek the finnish league where no good players are produced because there isn't enough money to do it and we have a rubbish everything.
Fan, how many times must I reiterate the fact that I am NOT, that's NOT suggesting that there should be a complete ban on foreign imports - merely a limitation. So, say every team must have at least 5 Englishmen in their first team every week, and 8 in their first 16. Therefore, the situation you keep suggesting would not be the case! The point would be, that teams like Man Utd would have to invest more in their youth system, to bring through young players. Look at Boro for example, they have a top academy - hence the likes of Lee Cattermole, James Morrison (previously Undiscovered) have broken into their first team lately, If the biggest clubs - Man Utd, Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool followed suit, many more youngsters would be encouraged into the game, and would undoubtedly improve their game. I;m not talking about Man Utd having to bring in average English players like Leighton Baines and a cycle developing from that, at all! Anyway, if such was the case, there would still be scope for Man Utd to bring in another foreigner as a replacement, under my propsed regulations...
i don't think at any point i've suggested a blanket ban. let me check though..... nope. and whilst commiting myself to typing this i sneezed into my cereal and now there is milk and flakes all over the place. damn you! anyways. if teams like boro are putting so much into english talent and only getting back morrison then what is the point of man utd doing it? do they really want a team full of richardsons? looking closely at the boro situation, is there anything different going on there that isn't happening at the big clubs? do man utd et al not have working youth facilities that excede the likes of boro? the answer quite obviously is yes so the reason english players aren't coming through at the very very top end (discounting newcastle as they are a midtable team(sorry to break it to you)) could perhaps be that there just aren't enough quality ones electing to stay in the game at the point where it matters? what would your proposal (limiting foreign players in the starting eleven being the entire composition of it with no reference to numbers, ages, what qualifies as a foreginer, what happens to incumbent aliens and what happens with british non-english and e.u players...) provide by way of solution to this? what would then stop man utd et al stealing the likes of superstar footballers morrison and catermole at youth level leaving boro with a less stella line up? infact, rooney, ferdinand, terry, lampard, cole, owen (i think he started at everton to), robinson and other england internationals didn't start off at the academies of the top 4? with that in mind does your grimsby argument not become redundant? and why have you highlighted undiscovered? they were discovered with your 'regulations' not in place and while foreigners were still knocking about in the sunny north east, so if anything you're taking away substance from your own argument so many questions which as ever i look forward to you answering!
