Premier League chairman Sir David Richards has had a bit of a rant about the fact that our top-level clubs have been “a bit lazy” with regards to young English players, and have flooded the league with foreign stars, who squeeze home-grown talent out of the picture. Richards asked himself: "Does the Premier League hurt the national side? I think the answer to that has got to be yes." 

Richards then went on to do the unthinkable and defend former England boss Steve McClaren, saying: "Steve will tell you that he has to have the best players available, and the Premier League has hurt him. In fact I would probably go as far as to say the Premier League has probably cost him his job. Because what we've done, we've actually bought all these foreign players in."

I think the answers as to why England are poor, and why we are sitting here twiddling our thumbs as Euro 2008 rolls on, are varied, but one of the chief culprits is the press. When an Englishman pulls on the shirt he probably feels a combination of inertia and gut-wrenching angst. In general, the England team play like a death-row inmate sitting in an electric chair, and a large chunk of blame for that rests with the press and their blame culture.

We are relatively unique on this isle for valuing heart and hard work over technique, but England appear both listless and lacking in technique – a failure in both of these areas can only lead to a general malaise. Players like Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, and Steven Gerrard, who play like fuel-injected lions for their clubs, are merely castrated chihuahuas for the national side.

The problem is not that they aren’t good enough; the problem is that they wilt in an England shirt. But here is the kicker; Richards is blaming the fast-growing foreign weeds for coming in and muscling out our gentle English flowers, when this patently isn't the case. Admittedly, there is a large foreign contingent in the Premier League, but a team with Gerrard, Lampard, John Terry, Rooney, Joe and Ashley Cole, and Rio Ferdinand in it is patently capable of mixing it in the European Championship, as all have made it to the summit of domestic football, sucking in the refined air of the Champions League final.

If foreigners are such a harmful influence, how do Sir David Richards et al explain the fact that England were at their wretched nadir in the '70s, when there weren't any foreigners playing? The '70s was a desolate decade when England regularly missed out on tournaments.