01 Aug 2015 22:33:46
I find it interesting that some people feel aggrieved about the fact we are fielding less and less English players, culminating from the fact on Thursday we only played Matty Targett as a starter with Harry Reed coming on as a late sub.
I've got two points to make on this firstly, at full strength I'd argue we would be starting three English players, namely Fraser Forster, Ryan Bertrand and Jay Rodriguez, as well as possibly James Ward-Prowse, and then Caulker, Targett and Reed featuring on the bench.
Given that we've sold a large number of English players in the last three seasons and a lot of these players are rarely affordable because of their premium price tags I'd say 7 out of a match day squad of 18 is more than acceptable for the time being. And that's without the occasional additions such as Sam McQueen, Jason McCarthy, and Ryan Seager.
But I imagine that's still not good enough reasoning to some, and that brings up the second point which is that for at least this season we are in a lull of ready made English talent from our academy. We have those that I mentioned above who have been able to make the step-up to the first team. And then we have players who need to get experience elsewhere such as Jack Stephens and Sam Gallagher who the club have high hopes about but are not yet at the playing level the first team are. I'd also include Seager, McCarthy and McQueen in this crop currently. So what is the club supposed to do?
They could have kept Stephens and Gallagher here to train occasionally with the first team and play the majority of their season for the U21s. But they should benefit a lot more from regular playing time in a league such as the Championship which will both toughen them up as players and potentially improve a number of other aspects to their game.
By the club doing this it continues to give a chance to the English players our academy produces who aren't quite ready, to still get a shot at the first team further down the line. There's probably no better example of this kind of player in our squad now than Ryan Bertrand.
So the point I'm making is short term we might not be seeing a squad full of English talent, other than the occasional break out star, but there's still very much an effort being made by the club so in the long term we can have half a team of homegrown stars, the majority of which will be English players.
Sorry for the long post Ed's, just thought it was an interesting topic to address!
02 Aug 2015 10:11:06
At the end of the day, I want us to win games and be challenging for silverware. If it means we have a team full of English, Spainish or Chinese players I don't care!