16/03/2006

There is nothing racist about seeking to safeguard the future of football in this country, and Pardew was merely re-igniting an argument that has burst into life sporadically over the last three of four years.

In many ways, it is easy to see where the West Ham boss was coming from. Not only does Arsenal's continental selection policy threaten the development of the national team - the bulk of Sven Goran Eriksson's current squad has limited experience of the exalted environs of the Champions League - it also undermines the symbiotic relationship that exists between club and locale.

Gloating Gunners have dominated the airwaves in the wake of last week's triumph over Real Madrid, but a sizeable minority have voiced concern at Wenger's methods.

Is Arsenal's place in the quarter-finals of the Champions League really a success for English football if there was not a single English player involved in it? Just as pertinently, does it mean less to Arsenal fans if they have no national bond to the players who achieved it? Listening to a few of them, it would seem that it does.

So Pardew was raising an important, if emotive, point when he spoke of safeguarding the link between club and country. The only problem is that he was directing his ire in entirely the wrong direction.

Despite last week's events, Arsenal are no worse than a host of their Premiership rivals when it comes to fielding English talent.

It is hardly Wenger's fault that two Englishmen who would have been certain starters in both legs of the game, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell, were nursing injuries on the sidelines.

Similarly, the Frenchman is hardly to blame for the failure of two of his most high-profile English buys of recent years. Richard Wright and Francis Jeffers cost a cumulative £14m - if that is what comes of buying British, it is little wonder that Wenger has tended to look abroad.

Except, of course, that he hasn't. Or at least he hasn't exclusively. Theo Walcott, the most sought-after English youngster of recent years, was on the bench at Highbury last week following a £12m move from Southampton in January. Such a massive investment is hardly the move of a manager with an aversion to homegrown talent.

Wenger, like all top-flight managers, would love to buy English players. They are temperamentally and tactically suited to the Premiership and do not take an age to settle into the hurly-burly of the domestic game.

But, as he has already found to his cost, there is a hitch. English players are hideously expensive and almost impossible to source. Until that changes, it is easy to see why he is tempted to look abroad.

Walcott's exorbitant transfer fee underlines the reality of the situation in which clubs like Arsenal find themselves. Once they declare an interest in a talented English player, especially one from the lower leagues, the asking price rockets.

Pardew should know all about that, having recently forked out a whopping £7m to sign Dean Ashton from Norwich.

The alternative approaches are to look abroad, where prices are almost invariably cheaper, or to attempt to sign the best players at an extremely young age. Ultimately, both methods involve a preclusion of Englishmen.

By focusing his attention on foreign markets, Wenger, in May 2004, was able to sign the highly-rated Robin Van Persie for just £2.7m. Less than two years later, and the 22-year-old is an established Dutch international worth almost three times that price. Regardless of how well he performs in the future, it is difficult to imagine Ashton's value rising to more than £20m.

Wenger has also signed a host of talented players at an extremely young age but none of the likes of Phillipe Senderos, Emmanuel Eboue or Johan Djourou are English. Why not? Because until a player turns 15 years of age, Premier League rules prevent him straying from his local area.

When it comes to securing under-15 talent, Arsenal's scouts are only allowed to sign a player who lives within an hour-and-a-half's drive of Highbury. Traffic conditions in London mean that should be about a mile-and-a-half away, but Premier League officials have defined the permissible radius as approximately 100 miles.

Expecting a club with global ambitions to restrict their recruitment policy to such a confined area is fanciful enough - to then expect them to compete with the likes of Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham, Charlton and Fulham is akin to asking them to commit commercial suicide.

The rationale behind the Premier League's ruling is understandable enough - no-one wants a position where talented 13-year-olds are at the heart of an undignified bidding war between clubs at opposite ends of the country - but the unfortunate consequence is that the bigger sides inevitably start to look abroad when they are sourcing young talent.

In such a situation, it is hardly Wenger's fault when the number of Englishmen in his ranks starts to dwindle dramatically.

The opening two days of the Cheltenham Festival have provided their usual quota of thrills and spills and, with everything building towards the Gold Cup tomorrow, the best is yet to come.

Or at least it is for those of us lucky enough to sit near a television screen in the office. For the majority of the British population, the Gold Cup will mean a snatched look at the result on the way home from work.

Like the Derby and the Grand National, the Cheltenham Gold Cup is an integral part of the British sporting fabric. Like the Derby and the Grand National, it should be held on a Saturday when people might actually have a chance of seeing it.

When is a World Championship 147 not a World Championship 147? Seemingly, when it happens in the qualifying tournament for snooker's premier event.

Robert Milkins won £5,000 for achieving the feat on Tuesday - if he had waited until the tournament proper, his winnings would have leapt by a whopping 2,900 per cent!

Published: 16/03/2006