English players in opening day starting XIs at all time low

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/aug/19/english-talent-premier-league-importing

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/aug/20/premier-league-english-talent-margins

worth a read. we had the highest at 6 (stats are in the second link).

not surprisingly, we had 9 last season, as the evolution of our squad this summer follows the overseas players route (except for Super Redderz and Hoop-doggy-dog)

edit - it fails to mention we also had 2 scots and 1 irish player on saturday.

 

Sign of the times Dave and reflects the improvement in the squad that we have all applauded. It is a great shame and nothing to be proud of, but it is a reality. To keep us in the Premier League with an esentially British squad was in itself a great achievement by Lambert.

 

should be noted that 2 years ago, we started with and all english team for the first time since Coventry this appears to have been taken away because Russ now plays for scotland, despite not actually being scottish.

 

you mean Max thurnby?

Bath, i remember that - Rusty was born in england but i guess that doesn't count as he plays for scotland now.

 

but at the time all 11 players could have been called up for england

 

poor form from the Guardian then - doesn't quite sound as good though 2 years compared to 20-odd years

 

I don't see the foreign influx as a bad thing, bringing in players brought up around different footballing cultures is a positive for our youth set up. I only see it being a problem when the majority of the academy is from overseas.

 

it is disappointing that there are so few english players featuring but i think if you look at the quality of those who featured this weekend, the standard of those picked is pretty high. when you go back 20 years to the first season, yes it was dominated by home-grown players but can someone remind me how england got on at that time? oh, that's right - they crashed out in the qualifying section for usa world cup in 94!! the key is to play quality english players - not simply play more english players for the sake of it.

ps. should just point out that our team was all-british and irish - it was not all english - so the guardian are indeed correct

 

Sorry Max - it had been a long day mate!