Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiffy
It's not that simple. Most of the time managers don't get the time to get the youth set up working. Take any club, let's say City. If they don't get into the top 4 next season, they'll probably sack their manager. As a result he's much more likely to sign proven players rather than risk losing his job. As Wright says, often the foreigner will play for less than the English people want. Who in their right mind would pay an Englishmen more than a foreigner with the same talent? Club football contributes more than its fair share to the national team. Wright seems to want clubs to make sacrifices in order to benefit the national side. With the amount of money in the game now, that's never going to happen.
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It's not just a question of the economics, it's a knee jerk reaction to invalid stats.
Look at the United team of 1986, how many were England Qualified from a first chice IX? Robson, Gidman, Bailey, Duxbury. That's it. And Duxbury and Gidman were hardly ever considered for England.
Liverpool of 1986: Barnes (maybe or was he still at Watford?), Neal?...I'm strggling to think of any more.
Everton: Lineker, Reid, Gary stevens, Trevor Steven, Heath, Mountfield. Of those Heath and Mountfield were nowhere near. You could include Bracewell I suppose but he was never fit enough anyway.
That's three of the top teams of that era, packed with irish, Welsh and scottish. A sprinkling of Danes etc and you'd be luck to get 44% England qulaified players out of it. Every set of stats i see about this is skewed, and deliberately, as they include "British" players as being English...£#%&! knows why.