Just a thought-want to see what everyone else thinks.
It is clear that our squad is very multicultural with few British players and only a handful with good english (I cant make out what xabi says in post match interviews). There are many who struggle to get to grips with the language and so.
My point is, that in recent years when teams have won the league (arsenal, united and chelsea) they have done so with teams with a good group of English speaking players amongst the squad either at the time of winning the leagues or prior to.
For example, Arsenal won the league with a very multicultural team in the early 2000s, however this team had been raised by the likes of Seaman, Campbell, Keown, Adams and others (the likes of bergkamp, viera, henry) who passed on knowledge and experience to the arsenal team of the early 2000s.
For Man Utd, the had the likes of pallister, bruce, mclair, irwin who helped foreign counterparts like cantona find their feet and then this team continued to thrive thanks to a strong english speaking contingent (scholes, beckham, giggs, cole, keane, the nevilles) and then after taking a year or two to regather his squad they went back to winning ways with a strong english-speaking contingent still ( scholes, giggs, carrick, hargreaves, rooney, ferdinand, g neville, fletcher, o'shea).
Chelsea, won the league with heavy investment but still with a strong group of english speakers (terry, duff, lampard, wright-phillips, bridge, A.Cole (eventually) J.Cole, Parker) which in turn helped strengthen the squad.
What have we had?
early 2000s: owen, murphy, Gerrard come through but to no real strong english-speaking contingent.
Now: Gerrard, Carra, Keane (
). No real strength in english speaking players apart from gerrard and carra.
My view is that this is the reason that us and arsenal are falling short of chelski and utd. Arsenal have no real english-speaking players in there squad and neither do we apart from the aforementioned whereas the spine of chelsea and united do - chelsea have much less this season which I think could be a bad thing (still have, terry, lampard, both coles in first team). United still have that stength (Ferdinand, carrick, hargreaves, G.neville, rooney, giggs, scholes). I know some players arent featuring as much (ie. scholes and giggs) but they are still important elements of the first team squad.
Of course it still takes a great manager to organise his players, but an even better one to manage such a multinational AND multicultural squad (ie scolari at Chelsea - time will tell) arsene wenger managed it and he crafted the invincibles of 2003-2004 which perhaps saw the best football in premier league history.
**** We have, spanish speaking players, english speakers, danes, portugese, french, italian, slovaks, czechs, scouse!
.****
It is clearly a problem especially when we continue to bring in more and more diverse players every year.
Hope you can understand where I am coming from its just a point of view I hope you all appreciate.
Thanks
Al
