4 English teams through to CL

[Aspers]

Pretty amazing standard our premier league.

[RedRedWine1]

Not many English players though......combine the four teams, can you even get a decent starting 11? I'm not sure you can. When the national side fails to get past the quarter finals of a major competition questions will be asked as to why this is the case. Pretty obvious to me.

[George Dawes]

Not many English players though......combine the four teams, can you even get a decent starting 11? I'm not sure you can. When the national side fails to get past the quarter finals of a major competition questions will be asked as to why this is the case. Pretty obvious to me.

10 english players where on the field at last years final in moscow. am sick of having this argument on other forums in europe!.

[durhamshrimp]

Danny Baker was talking on 606 last night about how it's making the European Cup a bit crap. He was saying it's not that magical anymore seeing that the last time an English team didn't even make the final was 2004.

[George Dawes]

Last years final lineups in Moscow

Man Utd squad: Van der Sar, Kuszczak, Heaton; Brown, Evra, Ferdinand, Vidic, Neville, O’Shea, Pique, Silvestre, Anderson, Fletcher, Hargreaves, Carrick, Scholes, Giggs, Nani, Park, Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, Saha, Welbeck.

Chelsea: Cech, Hilario, Belletti, Ferreira, Carvalho, Alex, Ben-Haim, Terry, A Cole, Bridge, J Cole, Ballack, Essien, Lampard, Wright-Phillips, Malouda, Kalou, Anelka, Drogba, Shevchenko, Mikel, Makelele.

i count 15

[wijit]

Unless you have an interest in our national side then the number of English v foreign players really doesn't matter. However, looking at the games I don't think it is that we are so very good, the quality of once great teams has deteriorated by some margin. Real are nothing short of an embarrassment compared to previous seasons with only Casillas showing any real passion, Barcelona are really the only truly great team in it at the moment. Liverpool played extremely well, but would they have got the result against better quality opposition? Chelsea were good, but not great and Arsenal took it to the wire.
This may well sound negative, but we are being made to look better than we are.

[RedRedWine1]

I like to see all the home nations do well. Only having 10 english players out of 22 starting is nothing to shout about, and rather disproves whatever point it is that you are trying to make Dawzi.

Compare: (Rome '77)

Clemence, Neal, Jones, Smith, Kennedy, Hughes, Keegan, Case, Heighway, McDermott, Callaghan

Unused Subs : Fairclough, McDonnell, Johnson, Waddle, Lindsay

Well done all the clubs who got through.......but of the sides who did IMO not enough quality English players are involved for the respective clubs (In particular Arsenal and Liverpool).

[George Dawes]

all top teams in Europe have gone this way, in Spain Italy and even Germany, the premiership is no different but i detect a lot of jealousy in the continent with our league, it's that what winds me up


but am all for this new rule enforcement there Trying to bring in ie. where six English players will have to be in every premiership, and as A Ferguson full backing

[Dazzer]

Did'nt Celtic win it in 1967 with 11 Glaswegians? or is that a bit of an urban myth.

But as somebody says above, the other top european teams have been going the same way for a while now. One Italian in the Inter team last night, well I'm sure that's what Andy Gray said anyway.

[campdave]

all top teams in Europe have gone this way, in Spain Italy and even Germany, the premiership is no different but i detect a lot of jealousy in the continent with our league, it's that what winds me up


but am all for this new rule enforcement there Trying to bring in ie. where six English players will have to be in every premiership, and as A Ferguson full backing

Doesn't have to be six English players, it has to be six players that qualify to play for the country they play in - eg Almunia and Cudicini would qualify as "english" having lived here for a certain number of years (either 5 or 3, can't remember), and not playing a full international for their country of birth. Makes the ruling ridiculous in my book.

Personally, while the top 4 in the Premier League are head and shoulders above the top 4 of any other European league, I don't think the strength is there in depth on recent showing of clubs in the UEFA club. Personally I think a bottom half Serie A, Bundesliga or La Liga side would trounce the likes of Middlesborough or Stoke - of course I've no way of proving it.

[Keith]

So what is happening in Europe now is what happened in England a few years ago, in that there is a 'cream league' within a league/knock-out competition. It's just an extension of that.

As someone who has the merest passing interest in Premiership football...
[Last night]
Me: Shall we go over to the pub for tea and to watch the Man Utd game?
Wifey: I've got some chicken to do frajetas
Me: Oh, okay then.

...does it impact upon Morecambe? Well, yes it does. More fans who are getting fed up with over paid, under committed Premiership that they can only afford to watch on TV has increased our support. Top quality British players who would once have been at top clubs are now further down the pecking order, which impacts all the way down. Arguably the best players at Morecambe would once have been a league or two higher.

So it benefits Morecambe that the Premiership is disappearing up its own arse... long may it continue!

[shrimper]

Okay here we go (well I didn't start it!)....

Inter Milan had one Italian in the side and with them, Juve and AC Milan also fielding sides full of foreigners in recent years - Italy haven't done too badly.

Our top teams were full of English players in the 1970s and 80s. The national side was ranked far lower than it is today and was rubbish in most tournaments. That argument is spurious IMO.

What the Champs (sic) League does do, however, is elevate the importance of European matches (which seem to be every week) to the players and managers involved. The impact of that is that clubs are even less happy than they used to be to release players for international duty and generally (though Capello seems to be fighting back well against this attitude) the players attach less importance to international games than they used to.

What the CL also does is provide us with far too much European club football - a lot of it pretty meaningless which, far from making it a more exciting event, has actually diluted massively the 'special' nature of that kind of competition.

In the 70s and 80s every single football fan in the country (whoever they supported) would be glued to their sets to watch ANY British team play ANY European team - because it was a relatively rare and exciting event.

Dundee Utd v Sparta Prague, Aberdeen v Malmo, Ipswich v Alkmaar - it didn't matter. It was OUR national champion or cup winner versus the equivalent from Europe and it was special.

Nowadays TV audiences for individual games are far less but they make their money by giving us loads of them.

Nowadays supporters of other (non-CL) clubs have a vested interest in those top clubs NOT doing well in Europe because the better they do, the further and more out of reach the top of the Prem becomes to our own clubs.

So many people don't cheer on 'our' representatives any more.

It funnels too much money into too few clubs each year - that's why ManU, Arsenal and the rest of the G14 mafia forced Uefa into setting it up in the first place. They wanted to GUARANTEE these millions (as much as anything can be guaranteed) for their own clubs, year in, year out and set themselves up as a new level of football. Create a 'them and us' cartel, if you will.

My vague hope is that, because Britain has bigger football TV audiences than anywhere else in Europe, the trend of our top four clubs ALWAYS getting to the last four - and one of them NEARLY ALWAYS winning it - other big clubs in Europe will finally see it for what it is and say 'enough's enough'.


Scrap it tomorrow and get back to a champions only, straight knockout European Cup.

Just who does this poxy competition benefit other than the big clubs, their foreign owners and the TV companies?

It certainly does nothing for football (IMO).

[P/T Indie]

Pretty amazing standard our premier league.

Maybe the top 4 teams as they get the champ league money every year but not the rest.

I actually agree with Blatter for once that the majority of teams in the premier league just play to stay in it.

In Germany the top 6 sides are covered by 3 points and the lead changes every week and at the start of any season up to 8 teams have a realistic chance of winning the title. Take the Hoffenheim story where the club have come up from non league (yes with some financial help but not as much as is made out) and in their 1st season of top flight football they could win the title.
That could never happen in this country as even Man City will find out it doesn't matter how much money they have players wont sign as they aren't in the champions league.

[Aspers]

Also Celtic and Rangers should not be in the Scottish Prem.
Its ruining Scottish football.
I've heard that argument for as long as I can remember.
Be good if Villa or Everton get a chance this year.
I also think the CL has devalued the European Ties.
I guess thats progress.
I mean I remember when the L6 ran from Heysham Towers to Christie Park.
They changed that,
I guess that's progress.

[shrimper]

Also Celtic and Rangers should not be in the Scottish Prem.
Its ruining Scottish football.
I've heard that argument for as long as I can remember.

Different argument - they are just much bigger clubs than the rest in Scotland and always have been.
ManU and Liverpool have always been our biggest clubs and always will be (no-one can object to that). They would always win more than most but by engineering this guaranteed income (with Arsenal - Chelski had to spend ridiculous amounts at the right time to get their noses in the trough) they have made sure no-one else has a chance.

Unlike in Scotland - a lot of other teams in England won our top division and our premier domestic cup competition before the CL. Now the Prem is an impossibility for non CL clubs and the FA Cup is a once in a blue moon (Everton and Pompey in the last 15 years?) rarity.




Be good if Villa or Everton get a chance this year.
I also think the CL has devalued the European Ties.
I guess thats progress.

It may be the way 'big business' is driven (centralising resources and feeding a corporate empire) but it's not 'progress' in terms of the sport.

Sport was always meant to try to create an environment for fair competition. This has precisely the opposite intention and effect. If you doubt that, have a look at the G14 website and look at its stated aims. Its aim is purely to benefit its own member clubs, basically saying, stuff everyone else.
They are, to be fair, quite open about that - it's everyone else (including other Prem clubs and Uefa, who have let them get away with it instead of having the bottle to stand up to them).



I mean I remember when the L6 ran from Heysham Towers to Christie Park.
They changed that,
I guess that's progress.

[cultured]

I agree with Shrimper.

It is also a large problem when Portsmouth and Real Madrid are involved in a Tug of War for the services of Jermaine Pennant, and Hull City can spend more on players than Glasgow Celtic.

With a bit of luck, the devaluation of the pound to the Euro will result in a lot of the lesser names in European football going to other stations in the EU.

[Keith]

Sport was always meant to try to create an environment for fair competition.

No it hasn't! Sport has always been about the best and the 'not the best'. The European League is simply an extension of that. The sooner they just get on with having a European Super League and be done with it, the better!

[shrimper]

But the 'not the best' should have an equal chance to become 'the best' - which Forest, Derby, Villa and a host of others did very successfully and on pure footballing grounds pre-Champs League.

The G14 wanted a guaranteed number of games in Europe each year - not because it would make for a better competition, but purely because it would GUARANTEE them squillions of TV pounds EVERY YEAR.

They knew that they could take advantage of their temporary position at the top of the game (remember ManU had been out of the picture for a number of years) to set up a situation where, with just a few years on this new money-making roundabout, they could create a massive financial chasm between them and the rest.

That, they figured, would create (as long as they managed it properly) a scenario that would guarantee to keep them at the top - falsely (ie not JUST on pure football grounds).

They didn't want the 'risk' of qualifying for Europe and getting knocked out in the first round, thereby missing out on TV money.

Before the Champs League there were just 'clubs' - some good, some not so good but with a genuine and realistic ambition of becoming as good as the top clubs through purely footballing means.

Now there are Champions League Clubs and the rest. The CL clubs can cherry pick the best players and managers at their whim, meaning they stay at the top and (by picking up players from their closest 'pretenders' when they feel like) make sure the non-CL clubs stay that way.

The formation of the Premier League, with its sole TV negotiating rights, was the start - but the CL is certainly the most significant factor in this 'them and us' cartel.

I just wish someone would have the guts to raise the issue properly instead of tinkering around the edges of the problem.

Even the media aren't tackling it with any kind of courage.

If people are happy with the situation then fair enough, put up with it.

But I think it's sad that we've said goodbye, realistically - without so much as a whimper - to the prospect of teams like Villa, Everton, Leeds, Forest, Derby and, yes okay Spurs (who have all won the top division in my lifetime) EVER doing it again.

The only way they could hope to do it now is via some ludicrous spending spree the type of which City may attempt next season - is that what we want?

And this GUARANTEE of money (nothing in sport should be guaranteed!) is the only thing that has attracted big foreign investors - previously it was too much of a gamble for them (as sport should be), you had to be a mad keen fan to invest big bucks for any length of time in your club.

With the foreign owners comes a 'worldwide brand' attitude which WILL (unless someone stands up to them) lead to competitive games being played wherever in the world they want.

I'd laugh if it also sees the start of serious franchising and, some way down the line, a billionaire American owner decides the city of Manchester doesn't quite fit in with that 'brand' and we get 'United' moved to London. Or Shanghai.

[Keith]

I don't disagree with you in principle, I think it has become extremely boring. I was a Man Utd follower and to an extent, I still am, in that I want them to win everything that Morecambe can't win. But I don't 'care' enough to walk 300 yards to the boozer so I could watch the game this week.

The problem with your argument is that you are almost suggesting that the big four should have been benevolent towards the almost rans. In reality, it was damn good business by the directors of Man Utd and co to secure their place at the top table. They read what was coming and embraced it, formed a cartel that is rarely, if ever, going to be broken.

You mentioned the media not challenging it, but I'm not surprised. If you rule the Murdock press out to begin with, they will never bite the hand that owns them, you are left with a few newspapers, BBC & ITV. They all know that the majority of their readers/viewers will be 'fans' of the big four. Only the BBC could ever risk upsetting them without potential loss of revenue. So, they all play ball.

As I said earlier, I think clubs like Morecambe are now actually beginning to benefit. Being honest, ten years ago, would Freez have been at Christie Park on Tuesday, or in front of the TV to watch Chelsea? There will be ever increasing numbers making the same decision, it's up to Morecambe to market themselves to make the most of the potential.

[shrimper]

I accept nearly all of that.

I wasn't, though "almost suggesting that the big four should have been benevolent towards the almost rans". I'm saying they shouldn't have been allowed to get away with it without a fight.

The G14 clubs - as I said - were quite open about their intentions. They haven't 'embraced' what was happening, they have dictated how football should be structured - that's not their job and it was all powered by greed. They were already the most powerful - they wanted to be moreso and to safeguard that situation against any real competition.

It may be (selfishly) seen as their right to try to do that - they just shouldn't have been allowed to do it.

And it's the organisation that's supposed to govern European football that should have at least tried to stop them. Instead of which they rolled over and did it all for them.

I'd have preferred a stand-off with Uefa saying 'Okay, go and form your own European league - but you withdraw from your domestic league and trophies first, you can't have it both ways.'

Of course that would carry with it the necessity for the other clubs to stand firm against the G14 instead of scurrying off to join them.


A European League with 14 (or even 20) clubs playing each other week in, week out would die on its **se in a few years because fans still want to see proper domestic competition with local derbies as their mainstay. And in any case it'd end up with some of the lesser G14 teams like Ajax and Dortmund at the bottom every year so they'd soon get fed up.

I know Sky won't say anything because it's them that's led it all.

But there are papers not owned by Murdoch who could take it up.

Uefa could at least have taken the issue to its member clubs and asked them what they thought, before kow-towing.

[Keith]

I'm not convinced that Spurs (for example) would want a Premiership without Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea & Liverpool though. Certainly Hull & Stoke wouldn't, there is money that they would lose too. Without the big four, Sky wouldn't pump as much money in to the game, they want matches that sell, here and elsewhere. So a diminished Premiership without the four would also lose. Sure, those currently mid-ranking clubs, Villa, Everton, Spurs etc would make winning the Premiership more interesting, but it would remain a weakened league.

Now if you are saying that Man Utd was better run than UEFA, well that's something I'd agree with! The management of certain clubs saw this coming. UEFA either didn't see it, or did but decided to sacrifice everyone else at the top.

[Aspers]

I watch football, any league, any standard, anywhere.
As like most of you I've been to top class matches and live park matches to watch the beautiful game.
I wake up in the middle of the night to listen, watch and talk about football.
I have my favourite teams beside Morecambe, Man U, AC Milan, preston, brighton doesn't even matter if the 2 teams playing I know nothing about.
While there are people like me prepared to pay to watch football on TV(I pay about $1500.00 per year).
there will always be a need for televised soccer.
I even watch the Matilda's, and not just because they got their kit off either.
Lets face it, we'll pay what we can afford.
i can see lots of different points of views on the whole topic but my original statement still stands which was.

Pretty amazing standard our premier league.

[pompeyred]

Not many English players though......combine the four teams, can you even get a decent starting 11? I'm not sure you can. When the national side fails to get past the quarter finals of a major competition questions will be asked as to why this is the case. Pretty obvious to me.

1 GK B. Foster (M)
2 RB J.Carragher (L)
3 CB J.Terry (C)
4 CB R. Ferdinand (M)
5 LB A.Cole (C)
6 DM. O. Hargreaves Mid (M)
7 CM. F.Lampard (C)
8 AM. S. Gerrard Mid (L)
9 LM. J. Cole Mid (C)
10 RM. T.Walcott (A)
11 Att. W.Rooney (M)

GK. B.Amos (M)
Def. W.Brown (M)
Def. G. Neville (M)
Mid. M. Carrick (M)
Mid. P.Scholes (M)
Att. D. Welbeck (M)

(A) - Arsenal
(C) - Chelsea
(L) - Liverpool
(M) - Manchester United.

So.....not an 11 true but a very good 16 I think.

[Moose]

Not many English players though......combine the four teams, can you even get a decent starting 11? I'm not sure you can. When the national side fails to get past the quarter finals of a major competition questions will be asked as to why this is the case. Pretty obvious to me.

1 GK B. Foster (M)
2 RB J.Carragher (L)
3 CB J.Terry (C)
4 CB R. Ferdinand (M)
5 LB A.Cole (C)
6 DM. O. Hargreaves Mid (M)
7 CM. F.Lampard (C)
8 AM. S. Gerrard Mid (L)
9 LM. J. Cole Mid (C)
10 RM. T.Walcott (A)
11 Att. W.Rooney (M)

GK. B.Amos (M)
Def. W.Brown (M)
Def. G. Neville (M)
Mid. M. Carrick (M)
Mid. P.Scholes (M)
Att. D. Welbeck (M)

(A) - Arsenal
(C) - Chelsea
(L) - Liverpool
(M) - Manchester United.

So.....not an 11 true but a very good 16 I think.

Must admit, I did think after the original post, that a decent team 'could' actually be made from the four teams and now that pompeyred has bothered to type the full player list out, they are all players who really do give it their all. I'm not sure (without wanting to sound like an arse), what is it you see as pretty obvious?

[RedRedWine1]

I think not enough English players are exposed to the highest standard of club football. Due to many English players reluctance to travel abroad to play club football this is perhaps their only chance, aside from national world-cup qualifiers and games in major competitions, that they will be pitted against a foreign side on a regular basis which plays at a different style and in a much different fashion. IMO, this lack of exposure makes the national side look one dimensional, and its caught us out in the last few competitions.

I may have been hasty in saying a good 11 could not be established from a combination of the four sides (appears that you can), but I don't think that squad named by PompeyRed disproves my initial main point. Yes, you've named 16 players, but of those named the two keepers are average at best and a few others in the squad are has beens or relative unknowns. Out of a possible 68 players (4 teams, 11 starters and 6 subs) we are struggling to fill one team full with decent English players.

Was going to write about foreigners improving the general standard of our league, but that there may be too many of them now etc, but I got bored of typing. To me, it seems pointless commenting on this topic any further. Unfortunately big four supporters are like rats in this country (you are never further than 5 meters away from one) and as such the current state of our league is probably seen as very being very exciting by the armchair watching, sun newspaper reading masses.