It comes down to club or country.. I personally prefer the German approach to football, less money more home grown players and a better national record. But I imagine that's because I am unimpressed by the way teams like Wigan can survive on TV income in empty stadiums. Fair play to City today, they may have bought it but at least their fans stayed with them through the bad times & are not the vain glory supporters found when Chelsea purchased success a few years ago.
I seriously object to any other clubs having oil tycoons, however the reality is that I'd welcome one with open arms for Leeds. Double standards I know, but at least it's my double standards!!
Before the influx of foreign players, the english 1st division was full of jocks, Welsh & Irish. There was a good crop of Scandinavians at one time too. When england won the world cup, this was the make-up of the league, yet you still won the world cup. I don't think it was anything to do with the quality of players available, percentage of foreigners in the league, or anything like that, as this has been pretty much a constant for decades & decades. Major factor (from the eyes of an outsider) was that you had home advantage for every one of your games. 2nd most important factor was that you had a genius manager who was way ahead of his time. Nowt to do with the influence (of lack of) of foreigners on the 1st div. Another way to look at it was the success of Eire under Jack Charlton, for instance. They had more success than a number of international teams, but how many of them played all year in Ireland? Don't know the answer, but suspect it might not even be one! So that blows the argument to hell. They came from all over! So you couldn't argue that their success came from having a 'pure' league at home, could you. I think a lot of this breast-beating about foreigners in the EPL affecting the national team is just an over-used excuse. As ever, it comes down to the fact that football never gets played on paper. No matter how good your team looks, nothing can be assured. That's the nature and the beauty of football.
Think it's a fairly acceptable point that the best nations all have a large number of home grown players in their clubs - whether the influx of foreigners in the english league is a reasonable excuse or not is irrelevant - the fact is, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Italy, France all have a much higher percentage of home grown players in their leagues, and thus do much better on the world stage! (and before any of you say France are **** etc, they had a manager who chose his team based on the constellations before Blanc came in!)
You can easily turn that around and point out that there are loads of international teams drawn from leagues that are almost 100% home grown, but the international teams are crap! Also, there is no correlation whatsoever between the success of england and the number of foreign players in the EPL. Just because the subject is oft discussed doesn't mean it's true. No-one has ever presented evidence to prove this - mainly because it can't be proved!!!
Yeah but I was making the point that successful international teams normally have a high percentage of players of their nationality playing in their leagues. Granted, it can not be proven, so this is purely down to opinion now! But I think the fact that a championship player in Jay Bothroyd (a decent player in his own right, not belittling him) was called up to the England squad goes to show the real lack of depth we have at international level. IF there were more english players in the premier league, this would not have been necessary. But there aren't more english players in the league, because they just buy foreigners instead. Someone mentioned the coaching though - just as important.
This is deffo a discussion for the pub. So much to say. Still like to point out that Eire did so well in a number of international competitions, and not only were NONE of the players playing in Eire, a lot of their team play in div 2/3/4!!! So the best internationalists to be picked don't necessarily have to come from the EPL!! Re. the coaching - it was me that mentioned Alf. However, the counter argument to his forward thinking is that Italy have played exactly the same way for what seems like centuries, and enjoyed success. Spain have disappointed for a number of years as they developed their current style of play, and are now top of their game. France, Portugal, Holland, Denmark & Croatia were teams that developed a style, then fell away for some reason. Germany, well I'm not entirely sure how they've played over the years, but I think the style is irrelevant to them. Their greatest asset seems to be their fantastic mental attitude. They don't think they're going to win. They don't even hope they're going to win! They know. They just know, and bloody hell, it really has worked for them for decades.
Yip, only chance you've got to fight with scum is if you're wearing a manc shirt in London .... or Hong Kong, Oslo, Beijing, Singpore etc., etc.
I like Fergies comment on sky sports "it took 5 minutes of injury time for them to win it" how many times have we seen injury time go in their favour. The 5 minutes obviously came courtesy of Barton, pet he is popular at the moment
The EPL is not the best football league in Europe, but you can't argue with it's ability to entertain and shock everyone. I doubt we will witness such a turn of events on a football field ever again, it was utterly fantastic and I was screaming with delight when Man City scored the winning goal, simply out of excitement for the game and how they won the title. Brilliant, just brilliant.
There can't have been many Scottish based players in the Scotland world cup team of 1974, which was by far the greatest Scottish international squad ever.
Only 4 from Leeds .... 1 GK David Harvey 07 Feb 1948 Leeds United (ENG) 2 DF Sandy Jardine 31 Dec 1948 Glasgow Rangers 3 DF Danny McGrain 01 May 1950 Glasgow Celtic 4 MD Billy Bremner 09 Dec 1942 Leeds United (ENG) 5 DF James Holton 11 Apr 1951 Manchester United (ENG) 6 DF John Blackley 12 May 1948 Hibernian 7 MD Jimmy Johnstone 30 Sep 1944 Glasgow Celtic 8 FW Kenny Dalglish 04 Mar 1951 Glasgow Celtic 9 FW Joe Jordan 15 Dec 1951 Leeds United (ENG) 10 MD David Hay 29 Jan 1948 Glasgow Celtic 11 FW Peter Lorimer 14 Dec 1946 Leeds United (ENG) 12 GK Thompson Allan 05 Oct 1946 Dundee FC 13 GK Jim Stewart 09 Mar 1954 Kilmarnock 14 DF Martin Buchan 06 Mar 1949 Manchester United (ENG) 15 MD Peter Cormack 17 Jul 1946 Liverpool (ENG) 16 DF William Donachie 05 Oct 1951 Manchester City (ENG) 17 MD Don Fort 25 Oct 1944 Heart of Midlothian 18 MD Thomas Hutchinson 22 Sep 1947 Coventry City (ENG) 19 FW Denis Law 24 Feb 1940 Manchester City (ENG) 20 FW William Morgan 02 Oct 1944 Manchester United (ENG) 21 DF Gordon McQueen 26 Jun 1952 Leeds United (ENG) 22 DF Eric Schaedler 06 Aug 1949 Hibernian
I watched the game in a pub where the majority were citeh fans (how times are changing) and there was only a couple of scummers, 1 of which was the cockiest dickhead ive ever seen. Safe to say the pub (including me) went mental at then end, and i didnt see/hear the dickhead again
