Just go back and look at #48! I'll ask again, who was the last Englishman at Arsenal to get a League winners medal?

Don't take this as an anti-Arsenal thread, my own team's as bad!

It isn't anti-Arsenal for me either I was just using them as an example. My team is not so guilty of having a load of foreign players. Theres only Okocha, Pedersen and I suppose you could argue Myhill even though he is eligable to play for England and if you want to be REALLY picky Ricketts cos he's Welsh but to our credit we do have 2 Hull born players in our team Windass and Barmby

Almunia will never be picked for England, mainly due to the fact that he's a pretty rubbish goalie!

The teams buy foreigners because the English players are rubbish!!! There can be no argument about that! The players are just starting to come through, but they don't have what is required to make it at the top level, apart from a select few! Its going to take a lot more effort from the FA if they want a team of stars for the future! English players with talent will come through, foreigners do not impede good talent coming through the youth ranks! And when you say, "We have to scrape together a team from the few English players that do get first team football regularly", you as well as i do that that is rubbish, because the players that play in the England squad at the moment play week in week out for their clubs, and they play well! And the fact the we can get a team together with a good few to spare shows how wrong you are!

If we didn't have the likes of Stevie G,Rio Ferdinand and the like where else would we get our England Squad from? Wes Brown is crap and doesn't deserve to get into Man United let alone England, Jamie Carragher is a thug, I have already mentioned the goalkeeping talent...none to mention... I could go on and on but I wont. Get rid of the crap out of the England team and you have little left. English teams are not English anymore if they could get away with it managers would field an all foreign team which has left little room for good english talent. There should be rules as to how many foreign players an English team can field. If that happened then we would see things change...Man U, Liverpool ,Chelsea ,Man City, Arsenal and a whole lot more wouldn't have a squad to choose from!!!

But that's silly, if you take away the first team from the italy squad or spain or holland or anyone, their next team won't be as good, it doesn't just apply to us! We have a good enough crop to pick from to pick 2 or 3 strong squads!

Man City are not all foreigners, they have produced loads of great talent over the last few years!

If you did put a cap on the number of foreign players, yes, obviously managers would have to buy English, but the qualit in our game will never be as good as it is now!

To a degree i somewhat accept that what you say Koo is fair enough and very much the thinking of the EU Commission that has to date constantly refused such an idea of capping the amount of foriegn players that come into our leagues.In saying that though i also see that not capping the amount does restrict the real amount of talented youth we have trying to get onto the big stage.
The major problem as we all know through constant debates regarding this,is that Foriegn players are 1]Alot cheaper to purchase rather than home grown talent and 2]The foreign attitude towards the game starts from an age where they are just about kicking a ball,and not waiting until a youth player is already hitting the 16/17 age before actually building up their skills and knowledge of the game like we do with our youth talent.

The other point is as we all have seen recently and something that should be addressed is that when a smaller club does have the youthful talent in their ranks and academys,the bigger clubs come along waving their mega-pound signs and signs the youngster.All for the knowledge of knowing that they now have the latest hottest property to emerge from home grown talent,to do what 96% of the time to let them struggle to progress in their academys because they also have the best young foreign talent attending.
This needs assessing as i believe that if that home grown talent was left to study and learn thier trade at the smaller club,then more and more young english talent would make it through to the top flight first teams.Millwall have one of the best football Academys outside the top flight and have an average production of young talent filterering through of approx 84.5%,only for time and time again the bigger clubs come in and take the youngster only for 28.7% approx able to make the step up,wheres if left to progress fully through the academy that percentage of success would be alot higher.

Well put my Den dwelling friend!