Why Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United rely heavily on their foreign investments

The EU's rules on migrant workers allow this to happen, English players have just as much right to play in other EU countries as European players have to play in this country. As for non-EU players... that is another story. The question we should ask is why English players find it so much harder to play abroad.

If anyone is to blame, its lower league clubs. The prices for English players just goes up and up, they're talking about nearly £20 million for Bentley, a man who has struggled to make an England squad until recently. If the players were good enough, they'd be getting played. United can afford to go out and pay £30 million for the likes of Rooney and Ferdinand, Chelsea can do the same, but Liverpool, Arsenal and everyone else for that matter just arent in the same position. Its not our managers responsibility to make the national side better, its his responsibility to get the best players for the best price. And seeing Fernando Torres go for only a few million more than Darren Bent is a microcosm of the whole problem. An english player has ONE good season, and their club suddenly thinks that can treble their price. Michael Chopra, an average Championship striker, cost £6 million. Liverpool signed Fernando Morientes, a CL winner and amazingly established footballer, for the same. Okay it didnt quite work, but thats the sort of price problem there is. This is the best league in the world, with the most money, and its aim is to dominate europe. That means we can buy the very best players, and unfortunately not many of them are English. Thats just a fact of life.

WW

Manchester United does not really depend entirely on their imported players. Let us a take a critical look at top 10 premeirship clubs and you will find out that Manchester United has a lot of British players in their 18 man squad - BROWN, FERDINAND, O'SHEA, NEVILLE, FLETCHER, CARRICK, SCHOLES, HARGREAVES, ROONEY, GIGGS. If others clubs can have that much British players in their top ranks, then the English National team will be okay

Poor research. United could field an all British Isles team of Foster, Simpson, Brown, Ferdinand, O'Shea, Hargreaves, Fletcher, Carrick, Scholes, Giggs, Rooney. And they'd still have a bench of Neville, Eagles, Evans, Campbell and Welbeck. Not too shabby and certainly good enough for a top four finish.

are ARSENAL not worth a mention here? they have ONE Englishman in their entire squad, WALCOTT.

@TOOTH your a goon my friend - an all British Isles team? who would they play? The Eastern Bloc? Africa? good enough for a top-four finish in the championship i think

What a complete load of pish that was. yeah yeah its all the top 3 or four clubs that are to blame for this etc etc etc etc and as for Blackburn and Bentley etc etc, hello Roque Santa Cruz is there top scorer? Is he English? Mccarthy etc etc etc are they English. Don't make out it is just top four because it is every single club in the league. And as for Nozzy "we can't spend what Chelsea and Man Utd do" do me a favour mate. Fernando Torres free was he? How much has Benitez spent trying to win league? Oh yeah hardly anything eh. Only Chelsea spent more in same period.

Might it not be something to do with the fact that the PC brigade tried to ban competetive sport, New Labour sold off school playing fields and for a near generation there was no organised sport in state schools? If there are so many talented but under used English players how come they are not playing in say the Scottish leagues etc. It's a free market players can play anywhere in Europe. Face it there are not enough talented English players and those there are, are vastly over priced

@DANNY SALFORD RED what a load of 'pish' u are mate. look at the amount of money Liverpool received for players LEAVING the club, and money attained for those transfers etc when you do, the money spent by Benitez over the years is a fraction of the reported figure - its not straight cash he has dug up, its money managed from other transfers and deals at the club - AKA money management

Oh dear Danny, another delirious United fan. Torres cost £20 million. By far our biggest ever transfer fee, a fee that was not as much as Chelsea spent on a back-up English right-winger (Wright-Phillips) or United spent on a utility player for their squad (Hargreaves). Rafas spent a lot, of course. He's also been there for a lot less time. He inherited a squad where Steven Gerrard was the only remotely valuable player, at a time when Uniteds squad already consisted of the likes of Ferdinand (£30 mill), Rooney (£30 mill), Van Nistelrooy (£20 mill) and Carrick (£20 mill). Since then Ferguson has been able to spend ridiculous money on SQUAD PLAYERS (Anderson and Nani) The exact same thing goes for Chelsea. They could afford to spend £10 million on Scott Parker, purely on the off chance he delivered his young promise. At the same time we spent most of our budget that summer on Xabi Alonso, a man who pretty much had to play every game such was the lack of squad quality we had. If Rafa had been able to go out and spend £30 million on more than one player, on whoever he wanted, if he had Abramovich as a chairman, then we wouldnt be sat here talking about a TOP FOUR. We'd be talking about a TOP ONE and three other quite good sides playing catch up.

Is Sepp Blatter's 'foreigner quota' idea aimed internationally or just at the English premier league? If it's international it's fair enough all sports fans all over the world should want to see great talent coming from their country whether they be footballers or whatever. This wouldn't only affect English clubs (Arsenal especially but not exclusively), this would also seriously damage other clubs such as Barcelona and Inter Milan and to be honest it serves them right, having no faith in home grown talent and hindering the development of their country's youth is ridiculous, all of the major European countries (apart from England) have an abundance of talent playing abroad, for instance Barcelona sold a prodigious talent in Fabregas to Arsenal because his position in the team was filled by the Portuguese Deco. If they hadn’t done that they would have one more Spanish player in their squad and would be better off if FIFA get there way and impose this quota. However if this is aimed only at the English Premier League it is ridiculous and completely unfair because as I said clubs in other countries have the same amount of foreigners if not more and would gain a huge advantage over English sides just like Barcelona did in 1994 when they hammered Manchester United 4-0 at the Nou Camp when United weren’t allowed to play players such as Cantona and Schmeichel because of a ’foreigner rule’ while they were allowed to use players such as Romario and Stoichkov who I very much doubt were Spanish. If this is the idea then it is simply a desperate and needless attempt to stop English sides competing at the top level with a very thin guise and a completely ridiculous justification which is that Mr Blatter believes English clubs are dominating the Champions League which simply isn’t true, dominance means you win whatever you are dominating over and over again and when either Chelsea or Manchester United win in Moscow it will be only our third Champions League success in 25 years, the Italians and Spanish and even the Dutch, Portuguese and French have probably won more Champions Leagues in that time! Restrict foreigners to stop English ’dominance’ in Europe? Your having a laugh Sepp.

sorry commented on wrong subject. It's true that the entire premier league is full of foreigners not just the top four. And the guy who said united spend ridiculous amounts of money on squad players such as anderson missed the point to that buy, he isn't just a squad player hes a player for the future, once scholes retires who do you think is going to step up and take the attacking midfield role? and to the liverpool fan who says that if liverpool had chelsea's money they'd win everything just remember chelsea are trying that and it isn't working, they are winning some trophies but no where near what they should considering the money theyve spent and liverpool wouldnt even do what chelsea have because of benitez' ridiculous rotation system, don't blame liverpool's lack of money next to united or chelsea blame your manager, you should be challenging for the league with your still quite expensive squad but instead your loitering in fourth and up until a few weeks back you were looking over your shoulder at everton whov'e proved it isn't all about money its about what you do with what you've got

Well said Mr Lamb. Finally a balanced point of view. Mr financial advisor, you wouldn't have had to sell so many players if so many of your squad weren't painfully average. And as for money management im sure you were one of the scousers laughing and chanting USA USA at us and banging on about financial meltdown and oh look you now have yanks in charge and somehow the fact we are ranked the richest club in the world and your squabbling amateur lot couldn't run a piss up in a brewery tell me we have the best of the 2 i think. AKA money management :-). Nozzy only Roman has spent more than you last 3/4 seasons. End of argument. On a serious note though i do feel bad for you's as a fellow football fan as it isn't your choice who buys you and its terrible when a club is bought by dickheads. I never wanted the Glazers same as everone else when i read about the debt but so far good. Trouble is you never know whats around the corner in football and it may be a different story if we go a couple of seasons without winning anything.