The dream of having a team full of local lads that win the game’s top honours has, in my recollection, only happened once, and that was the great Celtic team that won the European Cup in 1967. The complete side came from within a 20 mile radius of the Celtic Park. The current Arsenal plan is a noble one, trying to create a squad of players who have come through the coaching system, starting at a young age, maturing into the first team and having a deep rooted love for the club.

It is a blueprint for survival for many clubs and is soon to become part of FIFA's roadmap for the future of the game. Next season only three teams will be seriously spending money to win the Premier League, others will be spending to achieve top four status and many will stop spending all together as reality starts to bite and bite very hard.

Creating a home grown side is possible and many teams have made this a club policy and are now working much closer with local youth community projects to try and bring the team and local footballing youngsters together.

The facts are that most of these teams are in the lower reaches of the football structure. I did see this phenomena first hand over 40 years ago when a youth policy first implemented by George Swindon and pushed on by Billy Wright, finally clicked and fell into place, making the victories of the 71 double team sweeter and more personal.

However the idea that you can stuff a squad of 16 year old players in one end of a football club, work on them, then five years later they come out the other end first team players who can win trophies is at best a "pipe dream" and more likely a recipe for disaster. I have always thought football was like life and that great teams are made up of all types of skills and strengths. "The rich three" can always buy the characters and skills needed to win trophies. Let's face it, Fergie was never going to go wrong buying Rooney! What brings together a great team is first some great players and some not so great but players that give the right mix and balance to win the top prizes.

The phenomena I witnessed was Arsenal's double winning team of 70 – 71. Eight of the eleven players that walked off victorious at Wembley in May 71 were home grown and their coming together, although not just by chance, was certainly not a deliberate management strategy.

Billy Wright, considered by some the architect of the 71 team, was dismissed long before his vision of a trophy winning Arsenal came to fruition and it was a few coaches and managers later that the all conquering Frank McLintock side emerged.

The background of these successful home grown players in the sixties was so varied. You had Charlie George - a pupil at a local school where co-incidentally, Bob Wilson was a teacher. The introverted Simpson compared to the perpetual motion of George Armstrong, the tireless Radford who had been appearing for Arsenal since the 64 season, where the ball controlled him rather than the other way round - it took time for the Yorkshire target man to finally become the finished article. The worry and the point I am at last trying to make is that it may take longer than the five years that Wenger has already spent constructing his latest team and he is not really using home grown players.

Scouring the world to find young rough cut gems to put them through the Arsenal football factory in the hope that they turn into world beaters, requires a huge turnover of players and even then there are certainly no guarantees. The concern I have is that these players are of a type that Wenger sees as the ideal footballer and we end up with an homogenized product i.e. Walcott, Denilson, Nasri, Rosicky etc. Football is not about cloning an ideal it is about totally different mindsets and physical attributes bolted together in players within a formation to give a winning team. George Armstrong was the first of the youth double winning players to appear for Arsenal, his first appearance was 1962 the last was Ray Kennedy in 1970 a full eight years later, so we may have to be a little bit more patient with Wenger's "third team" and give his production line time to mature.

The 71 double team was an accident of personnel. They ended up together through the turmoil of the sixties and they were what was left after several managers’ ideas and plans had not come to fruition, 80% accident, 20% design. They were a collection of vastly differing personalities that you could never deliberately replicate. I would never criticize Arsene Wenger in trying to create a tighter home spun feel to the club because I am sure he knows he will from time to time need to buy in re-enforcements.

However I wish AW and the board would tell us that competing against Chelsea, Man U (despite their financial problems The Mancs will still spend big - they owe so much money another 50 million won't matter!) and City is not possible and to win the Premiership, at the very best it is going to be a long shot.

As fans we will probably have to wait a few more seasons for Wenger's plans to take shape and hope that circumstances can conspire to throw up a title winning team (I do see similarities with this current team and the 71 double side). I don't mind the wait providing we are as informed as we can be, so as fans we can all go the the distance together, not with this divided opinion that is setting Gooner against Gooner with the "Arsene knows" in one corner and he has "lost the plot" in the other.

For myself I sit in the "results" corner, which is surely the most logical place to be - unless you are resigned to believing that finishing third or fourth is like winning a trophy.