41% of players have joined their club in the last year

By Tony Attwood

A recent report gives concern to the fact that a record number of transfers took place in 2013 with players recruited in Europe in the year 2013 making up just over 41% of all squads.  That makes it about 10 signings per club.

Now that is silly, because a turnover of players of such speed rarely brings in success.   Indeed the most stable club by this measure is seemingly Barcelona, with squad players having been at the club for five and a half years on average.

(But staying at a club a long time doesn’t by itself bring success.   Manchester United is the only other club with an average of more than five years.   Sometimes it just means your players are getting old together and the replacement policy is failing).

I am sure it never used to be like this.

Thinking back, the first ever football match (other than a school match) that I went to go and see, was in the only ground on White Hart Lane.   That was the ground of Wood Green Town FC (the ground of the Tiny Totts, as you will undoubtedly know being not on White Hart Lane but at 748 High Road Tottenham London N17.)

That first match was (maybe) against Dulwich Hamlet, and the chances are that most of the players had been with the club for a season or two, and almost all of the 22 players was British by birth

I still go and watch non-league and lower league football on occasion, when Arsenal are not playing, and, unless I study the pen pictures of the teams in the programme, I naturally have no idea which players are British by birth, British by nationalisation, EU, or non-EU.

And the fact is, even though I always buy a programme at such games, I don’t actually read through to check who holds what passport.  Quite honestly I don’t find it important.   Who the player played for previously – yes that can be interesting, especially if it is a youngster who I’ve managed to tip for great things but who has never made it, but nationality, no.

But the fact is that nationality seems to excite the press far more than the speed of movement.  Indeed the FA and its chairperson, Greg Dyke, are trying to increase the number of homegrown (which is not the same as English or British) players in the Premier League.  It is a typical error by the FA.  Nationality is irrelevant.  Player movement however is becoming crazy.

But since the FA can’t rely on my powers of observation, or my willingness to study places of birth recorded in programmes, there has been a survey by the Centre International d’Etude du Sport on which they can rely to get their figures.   It shows that the Premier League has the second highest proportion of “imported” players (by which I think they mean, non-nationals at the time of arrival) of the 31 countries they chose to look at.

Top of the “import league” is Cyprus, at 60.4%.   In England, Italy, Turkey, Portugal and Belgium the number of non-natives (if that is the correct phrase – probably not) is over 50%.  In club terms Internazionale have the most “overseas” players, with  89% of their squad so designated.

The problem I have at this point is one of definition.  I suspect Ramsey is considered a “native” but anyone from the province of Northern Ireland is not.  A bit silly that given that Wales likes to style itself a “country” these days, and not a “principality” as it was when I was at school.  Scotland on the other hand certainly is a country, while N Ireland most certainly is not.

In fact Uefa is working on the basis of whether players play in the same country where they were trained with England and Wales considered one country.  That number is 21%, and I still say, “does it matter?”   If I were a citizen of Andorra and chose to do my writing in Scotland (for reasons that will not become clear at this point) would it matter?  I can’t think it would.

But we are supposed to get really worked up about the fact that so many players are playing outside the country shown on their passport, or country of birth, or province of birth (in the case of N Ireland) or whatever.  I repeat, does it matter?  And I still answer no.

Does it matter how many “homegrown” players play in the Premier League?  No it doesn’t unless you are interested in that old and I would say harmful notion of nationality – a notion that has been the biggest cause of wars in Europe (with the possibly exception of religion) since the people stopped counting time backwards (BC) and became more logical.

There are constantly comments in the press about all these foreigners crowding out the decent jolly good English fellow who wants to play.  Quite honestly it doesn’t worry me a jot.  Much better, however, to put together a stable squad.

When Arsenal played Liverpool in the cup and Carragher threw a coin at the crowd