The 'We Need English Players in the Premier League' Myth

Where do you stand on things such as this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22748498

Personally I think it's a fallacy. Forcing teams to play a higher percentage of English players wouldn't necessarily make a better national team, it might actually make it worse.

Having better foreign players in the English league forces the English players to improve to make the first team. Playing with good players in training and then against them if you make the grade also helps them develop. Clubs go to extraordinary legenths to try and accommodate English players for example paying way over the odds when foreign players are cheaper. I feel if the young English players were good enough they would definitely be in the squad, they just simply lack the talent.

Calling for more English players is just a lazy excuse that shifts the blame onto clubs rather than the FA. The country needs better styles of coaching from a very early age when coaching is at its most important. The direct/long ball culture at youth level needs to go for a start.

It's impossible to prove whether the influx of foreign players is the cause or a result of English players being inferior. I reckon it's the latter.

In most cases they aren't good enough to keep up with the league's standards, there's no going back now.

We need to develop physical & more tactically disciplined players to bully these gringos out of our league.

What you need is a larger pool of technically gifted players.

Reshuffle the FA.

I have a feeling England needs what Scotland also needs.

In countries like The Netherlands, they have their best coaches working with young age groups, under 7's, under 9's, under 12's etc. And they make a great wage. In Scotland in particular, a lot of the youth training done both by the SFA and clubs is done by volunteers, or low level part time coaches (source - I've done some work for the SFA). Also, a lot of emphasis is put on physical attributes rather than technical ability. Whether this is down to the laziness of these coaches, or just that they don't know how to properly develop a young player technically, I don't know. I don't know if it's the same in England, but I suspect it probably is.

I'd say for a country with a pool of 55 odd million people like England, it is easily possible to produce international level players worthy of a place in any club team as long as the development of the players starts early. By the time places in starting 11's are being negotiated to allow English players to get more game time, it is already too late. Maybe you'll get the odd Raheem Sterling here, or an Oxlade-Chamberlain there, but to create a steady stream of English players able to get into their club team on merit, you need to start from the ground up.

Juvendinho wrote:What you need is a larger pool of technically gifted players.

youtube.com/watch?v=QZKz-_dCFpA

first bit came to mind immediately

Lets sell Coutinho and Suarez and bring through more Jonjo Shelveys and Jonathon Flanagans

LeoGuaje wrote:Lets sell Coutinho and Suarez and bring through more Jonjo Shelveys and Jonathon Flanagans

Best academy in the Premier League.

Clevz and Welbz will come to the rescue.

LeoGuaje wrote:Lets sell Coutinho and Suarez and bring through more Jonjo Shelveys and Jonathon Flanagans

You know that isn't what it's about.

It's about giving top coaching to young kids (I think that's been mentioned), clubs bringing players through their academy (when was the last time the likes of Liverpool brought through a "top" player? Arsenal gets so mich credit but their only one is Wilshere), actually allow eligible players to play in youth tournaments instead of prioritising senior friendlies etc...

Basically what the likes of Spain and Getmany have done.

This should eventually result in more, and hopefully better, English players playing regularly. Spain's and Germany is said to have a quite high percentage, I wouldn't be surprised if theirs was significantly lower before they realised they needed to change.