Are Wenger, Benitez and Eriksson putting a nail into England's coffin?

I'm so bored with England. It's a circus.

Yeah that's right the foreign coaches and players are to blame for the lack of decent English players in the Premiership these days. Whereas in days gone by England managers had a whole league of world class English talent to choose from and England swept all before them winning every world cup from 1966 onwards. It's only since Arsene Wenger came to this country in 1996 and started hunting our top players by moonlight (to such an extent they're now so endangered we rarely see them outside the zoo) that we've seen the decline in the English national teams quality. Graham Taylor Hoddle and Keegan were all just a massive collective hallucination caused by successive governments tainting the water with Lysergic acid. It made us think we have to watch untalented, overpaid, one footed, tactically naive, mentally weak wide boys strut their stuff on our hallowed turf as they're the only ones stupid enough to admit their nationality with such a vicious anglophobe on the loose. Of course it's the foreig

well if someone is good, he will be selected no matter what. show me a good english player who is affordable, and I am sure he will be sought by clubs. there are not many. so dont rant.

20 years ago it was irish, welsh and scottish players who 'affected the state of the England national side'. Take a look on the Liverpool starting eleven in the FA cup final in 1986... How many english (english - not british) were there? It's not better for english football to have scotsmen instead of eg. dutchmen..

Wright-Philips £ 21 mill. - Babel 10,5 mill. Carrick £ 16 mill - Sissoko 5,5 mill. Ferdinand £ 28 mill - Agger 5,5 mill. Get the picture?

Behind Boro, Arsenal have the most English scholars at their academy - so leave out with the nail in the coffin please, and research your articles before writing

While you can legitimately claim that Chelsea have harmed England with their squad treatment of Joe Cole and much more so Wright-Philips, Arsenal's academy is and always has been packed with young Englishmen who get the best training and the benefit of training with top overseas kids. The best will get into the first team (e.g. Cole, Hoyte), the next tier have been allowed to leave by Wenger, often for very low fees (e.g. Sidwell, Bentley, Pennant, Muamba, Hughes, Vernazza, Ricketts etc) - there are a huge number of Arsenal-trained Englishmen plying their trade in the leagues: it is not Arsenal's fault if they never quite made it into the 1st team of a club shallenging for the very peaks.

Im not gonna bother reading this shit, cos that is clearly exactly what it will be. Your national team was shit long before the arrival of Wenger, Benitez or Erikkson and will continue to be shit long after they all leave and pass away. Maybe you should look at valuing footballing skill over the tactics of Sam Allardyce and Hughes to find the problem.

Pennant came from Notts County, not through Arsenal's academy. He has also shown at Liverpool what he could have done at Arsenal had he been given more of a chance.

I'm, sadly, old enough to remember a very similar debate in the seventies as to whether the number of black players in the league was spoiling the English game. I wonder if in 30 years time we'll look back on this current debate with the same shame and embarassment.

Shame was that Pennant was too busy get wasted every night and getting banged up for drinking and driving when he was at Arsenal to play football. We loaned him out to 2 clubs each for a season to try and develop him, and they both happened to get relegated with him contributing little. Given that, its hardly suprising that we weren't ready to bench loyal servants like Ljungberg and Pires to allow him to fulfill his potential, so we sold him. Is true that England have always been pretty bad, there weren't many foreigners in the 70s and early 80s and our national team was still a laughing stock then. This is just scapegoating of the worst kind.

Brilliant, very good!

England no longer produces world class talent.If foreigh players were,say,banned from the premiership there would not be enough talented players to form a competitive league.Those in the England team are vastly over-rated and if anyone watches our under 21's competing with France,Holland etc its so obvious that our technique is awful.The blame lies in the way we approach football from the age of 8 upwards where little attempt is made to encourage skill and the whole thing is too competitive.Anybody can see this legion of would be Fergusons full of their own self-importane screaming at 10 year olds to sqeeze up,hit it long etc.We then end up with technical misfits in our England teams trying to justify the ridiculous hype when playing against teams like Croatia.It was laughable to hear the English press and brainwashed supporters dismissing an away game in Croatia as one where turning up was enough to get 3 points. Scholes,Gerrard,Lampard,Beckham described as world class is just a typically little islander a

[quote]Pennant came from Notts County, not through Arsenal's academy. He has also shown at Liverpool what he could have done at Arsenal had he been given more of a chance.[/quote] Pennant was given a chance at Arsenal, only he had Pires & Ljungberg in their prime ahead of him. If he (and Bentley) had shown some patience instead of mouthing off to the press about not getting a chance, they would probably still be here. Although Bentley was a big time Charlie (given the reports of his attitude at Norwich - contrast this to Bendtner at Birmingham to see the "English" mentality), Pennant epitomised the thick footballer by getting drunk and crashing a friend's car in the wall while suspended from driving, all this in the early morning of a game that he would have took part in due to injuries. If that is what you get with "English" footballers (not to mention missing drug tests like Rio and unrealistic transfer valuations), is it any wonder that managers buy foreign?! Why not have a go at the clubs for ch

England died sometime around 1970. They were subsequently cremated. There is no coffin left. The inlux of foreign players has merely provided a recent and convenient excuse for the lack of talent ever since. Take away all the foreign players and Emile Heskey would still be the 6th best English striker.

British palyers r way 2 expensive Carrick 18m Siva 5m Harewood 5m Kuraniyu 4m Rooney 30m Ronaldino 16m David Dunne 5m Perderson 1.5 Lescot 5.5m Toure 750,000 And the Fact thet Totnams 4 SF cost 40m and the Arsenals 16man squad4da pompey game cost 30 mil in terms of skills and quality brithish playas aint always the best

A lot of people don't really look into Arsenal's plans and youth/reserves side. Arsenal are nurturing the best talents for the benefit of the club as well as England. But Arsenal have the right to keep the best talents. The best will stay. Some upcoming talents such as Gibbs, Lansbury, Simpson etc. are gonna be Arsenal's backbone in the future. As for Pennant and Bentley's cases, they are impatient and they've blown their chances by involving themselves in trouble which prompted Arsene Wenger to sell them. Arsenal always don't tolerate such attitude and I'm glad that both Pennant and Bentley are booted out.

If foreign managers choose foreign players then we also must ask where are the decent English Managers We have an absolute clown running England so maybe that's something we should be looking at, someone who has ignored a world class centre back with proven ability in CL finals and at the very top of the game who was never given a look in over permanently injured defenders with no such experience England are crap

Hello? Greece won the Euro Cup with rubbish players right? It was good coach, strategy, plan and implementation. When was the last time England won the WC or Eurocup? The best English manager now in the EPL is big Sam and top teams in Europe won't employ him, why? So stop blaming Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, etc etc...because England team is crap under McClaren. Sven had no problem with qualifying rounds, but now....HAHA...England in Eurocup? We are having a laugh. I hope Benayoun scores 3 goals tomorrow.

Personally I think the media are looking for a scapegoat/passing the buck to explain the decline of the England national team. England have never really had a full out decent side, well saying that I think the last half decent team we had was Euro '96 and before that was Italia '90. The media always look at the one victory i.e '66 world cup final and think thats what our team of today should be based on. You don't hear of other teams basing their national sqaud on past conquests i.e "oh we won the cup 40 years ago so that gives us the right to win it all the time" crap! Look at Brazil they've been winning things for years but they don't go harping on about it. They turn up, let their football do the talking then they go home. This country suffers from the small minded media who can't see past their own noses when its concerning football..... and a fair few other topics too!

It is an anachronism that the United Kindom has four (sub?) "National" teams in England, Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland. Other counties (like Germany for example) play one team and not a series from once small independant states that combined long ago. Even Australia that so recently combined from previously independant states (each still with it's own prime minister and parliament to this day) has but one "national" team. Maybe that is part of the answer and pooling the total UK player talent would provide better results AND put Britain on a more equal and fair footing with other unified nations? As for foreign players in Britain's premier league: Not so much about "sport" these days and all about money and profit within these mega premier league businesses with these very predictable outcomes...

A lot of players come to this country or best leagues in the world at very young ages, e.g. Cesc 15yrs, C.Ronaldo 18, anderson Nani 18, kaka 18, Alaiadiere 15, clichy 17/18, dos santos barca 13/14 etc. You dont see english kids exported round the world to learn new things, that goes for older players, coaches, managers etc. England still got this belief that they created the game so they feel no need to learn of others, namely foreigners!!!! England need to admit that they not that great and can learn from other nations.

I think you'll find Pennant went to Arsenal as a 15 year old and went straight into their academy, meaning he is an Arsenal youth product. Saying that is just the same as saying Jermain Defoe was a product of Charlton and not West Ham. Lots of kids aged 15 change clubs before they sign their academy deals. All they would sign before that is an associate schoolboy form which doesn't mean a thing. Once they sign the adademy/yts deal then it starts to matter, not when they train somewhere once a week when they were 15.

I agree with the comments made here. Blaming 'foreign' managers for the woes of the english team for bringing in oversees players is just making a scapegoat for the deficiencies in the English setup as a whole. It goes down to the grass roots of training all the way up to managment and the FA. English players cost too much to English clubs, the youngsters are just not good enough and also when since were England a guaranteed world beater on the international stage? How many times have Spain won a major championship or Holland? It smacks of England not doing well and let's blame anyone else except the English FA. I'm very glad that we have some of the best footballing talent from around the world and think it's a very narrow minded view to say that they are the cause of all of England's (the team) troubles. We would never have had Henry, Cantona, Ronaldo et al playing for what is a very exciting league. If you give me choice of my local team playing with foreigners and doing it well over the E