Sunday, September 30, 2007

Why one-eyed Wenger is bad for English football...

Apparently, Arsene Wenger, the manager who sees everything when it suits his agenda concerning challenges or decisions which go against Arsenal, but then sees nothing at all when his own players transgress the laws of the game has given what Mihir Bose (BBC Sports Editor) has described as a 'brilliant speech' to 500 guests at the Emirates stadium.

Wenger told the assembled guests that he believes that having a quota system for home-grown players would be a recipe for promoting mediocrity in the Premiership. On the contrary, the whole point of bringing in a quota system is to protect the long-term interests of the National Association concerned, in this case we are talking about England's long-term future.

There's no doubting that Wenger is one of the best, if not the best at spotting talent from DVDs, and Sven Goran Eriksson isn't doing a bad job of that either at present.

However, the fact is Wenger is French, he has no long-term interests in the English game as a whole. Yes, he is 100% committed to the Arsenal and they are an English club, but it does not follow what is good for Arsenal is also good for the long-term future of the England national team.

West Ham United have done a fantastic job over the last decade when it comes to nurturing young British players, and much as it pains me to admit this Man City appear to be doing a much better job than United on this front at present. Both West Ham and Man Ciy are proving that it can be done if the clubs work hard enough instead of managers like one-eyed Wenger spewing out ill-thought out judgements about young English players.

No doubting I'll get a few Gooners telling me to mind own business, but if every club adopted Wenger's attitude towards home-grown players quite simply there would be no England team in a few years time.


Spot the Englishman.

For the record here is the Arsenal team that won at West Ham on Saturday:

Arsenal: Almunia, Sagna, Toure, Senderos, Clichy, Hleb (Eboue 31), Fabregas, Flamini, Diaby, Adebayor (Silva 79), Van Persie (Bendtner 88).
Subs Not Used: Fabianski, Denilson.

And here's the team that faced Newcastle in midweek:

Arsenal: Fabianski, Justin Hoyte, Eboue (Diaby 64), Senderos, Traore, Diarra, Denilson, Song Billong, Walcott, Bendtner, Eduardo (Perez 90).
Subs Not Used: Mannone, Lansbury, Gavin Hoyte.

6 comments:

  1. I would like to see some more open mindedness myself.

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  2. I think its ridicoulas the amount of English players that Arsenal have, or the lack of them.

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  3. Re: Spot the Englishman...well in those teams there's 4: 2 playing plus 2 on the bench: Walcott and Hoyte/ Lansbury and Hoyte younger.
    As ManU are also finding, getting talented English kids is not easy BUT the biggest problem is the ridiculous 50 mile/1 hour journey legislation for signing kids.

    God help the great prospect whether spotted by either Fergie or AW (or not), who lives in, say, Bodmin.
    Gooner for 60 years

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  4. To be honest with I don't agree with this 50 mile radius crap. Man City haven't found it difficult and if they can do it surely any of the top clubs can? The bloke in charge of City's youth set-up is a former local parks keeper (honest), he has rubbished the 50 mile argument recently in the local paper. He puts City's turn in fortune down to one thing alone, hard work...

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  5. That explains why West Ham will never dream of winning anything. They pride
    themselves in promotion to the premiership and avoiding relagation. While Arsenal pride themselves with a great assembly of footballing Nations(Nigeria, Ivory Coast etc) with almost all players
    playing outside the national leagues, so if these England lads are good, who
    stops them from playing abroad in say Spain, France, Germany or Italy?

    The quota system will only serve to bring down the quality of the premier league in
    England, and they'll still hang on to the now boring 1966 world cup story!

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  6. i am a gooner, and i m not a englishman. so to get the biaseness out of the way..and let me try to change your mind.

    let me ask u one qn. does the team make the player great or players make the team great? will titus bramble suddebly become great if he moves to man utd, ac milan, arsenal? no? maybe he will improve by 1-2% but he remains, crap..

    so lets look at arsenal's typical 16 match-day squad(subjected to change due to injuries- t make it interesting, i will not name walcott)
    lehmann, alumnia, gallas, toure, clichy, gilberto, eboue, sagna, flamini, fabregas, van persie, adebayor, rosicky, hleb, senderos, diaby..

    now i want you to replace them with an englishmen.
    here's a catch, u cannot name any players from man utd, chelsea or liverpool (unless u wanna give us rooney, which we will gladly take)
    now we realise that it is very difficult, maybe michael owen (17mil pounds, bent 16 million, and lescott 5mil) can walk in but other than that, it really is no other viable choice is there?
    you have to be fair, Arsene Wenger's primary duty is to build arsenal than England..surely you can understand. Arsenal cannot invent players out of thin air, even if we sign michael owen, micah richards.etc, england will still have the bunch. to be fair we looked at players like rooney (but you got him 1st..grr..i really wanted him then after his wonder goal for everton vs us) and we would definetly have signed lampard if not for the vieria-edu-berto axis already existing at Arsenal then. i mean if u had ronaldo vs kiren richardson..its no contest right? thus the same reason we released like muamba, sidwell, pennant and bentley is basically because of the exact same reason. (liverpool is not a step up, blackburn won more epl titles than them)

    furthermore, unlike man utd, which is blessed in being in a region of talent hotspot, north london isn't really a great catchment area.

    it is not a delibrate attempt by Arsene Wenger to exclude English players, its just that it happens that english players signed simply failed to make a grade and was sold. in man utd, they made it.

    maybe in a few years, the equlibrium will be restored, we do have a few up and coming youngsters like walcott and gibbs(who is touted as the next giggs, ain't u excited?)

    but you must realise that even Arsenal cannot help England, even if we had tried to. asumming a quota IS set and we just signed players from the same bunch..seriously, what difference does it make? noone can make titus bramble great...

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