Football Food For Thought / Nik Wardle / 14 November 2007 / 1

"Knowledgeable" Nik Wardle on why the absence of a quota system means England strikers rarely get a game for their club

Alex Ferguson commented in the press recently that he'd have no problem with English teams having to have a quota of home-based players in each side - Arsene Wenger, unsurprisingly, didn't agree, basically stating that the cream will rise to the top.

This follows Sepp Blatter's desire to have six players in each starting XI to be eligible for the national team where the league is based. The forthcoming EU Reform Treaty may allow Blatter's wish to come to fruition. Could a lack of home-grown players playing regularly in the Premier League be the reason why England are struggling to qualify for Euro 2008? At first glance, a look at our top strikers and the betting for the Top English Goalscorer appears to bear this out.

Wayne Rooney is the clear favourite at 2.86. There's no problem with this, as he's England's best striker and plays for the current champions. Steve McClaren's preferred partner for Rooney, Michael Owen, is at 7 - perhaps not surprising given his injury problems and that he plays for a mid-table side. What is slightly worrying is that a midfielder, Frank Lampard (4) and a bit-part striker for Liverpool, Peter Crouch (4.5), come before Owen. Shouldn't there be others ahead of players of this ilk? Darren Bent scored regularly for Charlton but barely plays for Tottenham, yet he's still the joint-fifth favourite at 8.

His fellow bench-warmer at Spurs, Jermaine Defoe, is out at 30. These are two players who on top form you'd think would be worthy of a place in the England squad. Defoe somehow manages to still get in but this can't be based on current form as he rarely gets more than twenty minutes for Spurs. Injury-prone Dean Ashton is at 15 and Andy Johnson is at 10. Both these forwards have ability but are unlikely to trouble the top of the Premier League goal scoring charts. One potential ray of hope is Gabby Agbonlahor, who is at 8. He's been getting a regular start for Aston Villa for two years now and must be close to a call up.
In the betting for Barclays Premiership Top Goalscorer 07/08, only Rooney (18) and Bent (44), of the English players, have odds of less than 50. Could the fact that our top strikers don't play regularly enough be a factor in our poor Euro 2008 qualification campaign? When England won the World Cup in 1966, all of our players were home-based. One thing for certain is that Rooney and Owen always get rushed back to national service, after injury - and a major factor must be because many of their potential replacements aren't playing regular football.

An interesting comparison is the top goal scorer charts the last time England failed to reach a major tournament, World Cup 1994. Back then the top seven goal scorers were all English: Cole, Shearer, Wright, Sutton, Le Tissier, Holdsworth and Beardsley. Purely on this basis, it appears we can't blame England's lack of success in the sparse appearances of English strikers in our top domestic league. So Ferguson's wish for an English quota possibly wouldn't help our national side - and it must be said, he's probably happy to go along with this more to weaken Arsenal and Liverpool than to help the English national side. So maybe it's the manager of England that's the problem or even the attitude of our millionaire players? It's not as if we've had France and Italy in our group.

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1. Marc | 20 November 2007

   Maybe Bent and Defoe don't play regularly because they are at the wrong club? Bent decided to go to spurs - they already had 3 top strikers, who scored loads last year! If he had gone to West Ham he would have been playing a lot more top flight games!

   You can't blame foreign players for Bent and his bad decision making! I say blame Bent for the poor national side ;)

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