Farcenal

Goodbye to the so-called ‘English’ Premiership. On Monday night, the defending champions; Arsenal, fielded a 16 man squad for their premiership clash with Crystal Palace, that did not contain a single British player. This is the first time this has ever happened in English league football.
Frankly this has been a long time coming, fewer and fewer British players are playing regular first team football in Premiership teams. It is no wonder the English national side is so poor; most of the players that play in the self acclaimed ‘most exciting league in the world,’ are not eligible for the England team! I personally think the Primera Liga in Spain is a competition of far more quality and interest than the premiership, but that is another argument.
I fully support UEFA’s decision to force clubs from all countries to list at least 4 home grown players in their 25 man squads by the 2006 – 2007 season. This rule applies only to UEFA competitions but hopefully we will also see it implemented domestically as well. Needless to say, Arsenal vice chairman, David Dein, has attacked these initiatives.It seems these days that the only thing English about most of the teams in the Premiership, are simply the fact that that is where they happen to play most of their games. Especially with the increased popularity of loan deals, and the fact that the Premiership is certainly the richest league around, essentially teams are staffed with hired guns and mercenaries, who are there for a pay cheque and have little desire for the club.