"But just how proud can you Englishmen be of how well your team represents its home country?"
Firstly Talksport are assuming that all people reading are 100% English, in fact a lot of readers will be from outside the UK, and even those from England itself will most likely have a bit of non-English in them in the form of Welsh, Scottish and Irish, or even something else.
Secondly even if one assumes that everyone reading is 100% English, whatever that is, then one has to assume that those of us who are 100% English would be proud to have a squad with more English players in it. This is another faulty assumption. Most club supporters couldn't give a monkeys for the sheer number of homegrown English players they have. Most supporters want a good team first of all, then it's a bonus if they can produce some top drawer English talent for the national team, but the number of average English players making up the numbers in the squad is completely immaterial to most of us.
Talksport's hatred of Arsenal is obvious from the large picture of our 'non-English' players celebrating a goal at the top of the article but it may disappoint them to learn that their analysis of things is deeply flawed. For one thing they ignore the players in our squad who are out on loan, this is downright nonsensical. Their table also makes no mention of whether a club's English players have been home produced or purchased in for big money, should Manu and Tottenham fans be proud of buying in all their expensive English talent?
Fundamentally it is irrelevant how many English players each club in their squads, the overall numbers are a crude statistic which give no insight into the quality of these players. What is important is how good the English players in the squad are, how good a club's youth development is and how many players that club is producing for England teams of the future. Look around the Premier League and you can see how many have come through the Arsenal system, there are countless examples such as Bolton's Fabrice Muamba and West Brom's Jerome Thomas. While the current homegrown English lads in the squad, such as Wilshere and Gibbs, are top top drawer.
It is interesting to see that whatever Arsenal do they are criticised in certain quarters of the media. When we had a defensively solid English side, it was 'boring boring' Arsenal. Now we have a creative and attractive side we are criticised for not being English enough, despite the fact that our youth system is producing some of the best young English players around. I bet Talksport won't be mentioning the paucity of homegrown English talent in the Spurs side, just think when the last England national team player who actually came through their ranks? Was it as long ago as Ledley King?
