This infernal matter about Arsenal failing to field a single English player refuses to go away. Let’s face it, if Ashley and Sol hadn’t been injured for the majority of the season, then this would never have been an issue. It’s also strange that this wasn’t a concern when Liverpool fielded an entire team of players from outside of England when winning the FA Cup in the eighties. People will argue that they were mostly British, but that ignores the fact that the Scottish, Welsh and Irish FA have no different standing in UEFA and FIFA than say France or Spain.

Mihir Bose (he seems to like stories about The Arsenal) is the latest to join the debate, with an article in The Daily Telegraph about how Arsenal went about applying for planning permission for their new training facilities at the end of the nineties. It’s largely pretty dull, but the gist of it states that “Arsenal played the England card to get their training ground” based around the fact that many independent people in the England set-up were asked to submit letters of support for the training facility’s planning application. Absolutely nothing wrong with this by the way, it’s standard practice for anybody submitting any kind of planning application.

Amusingly, the article reads “research by The Daily Telegraph has revealed that at the end of the Nineties, long after Wenger arrived, Arsenal secured planning permission for new training facilities by arguing that they needed them to help to develop young English-qualified players”. The piece also included photocopies of the letter headings as if they had been discovered by some Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalism, when in fact these letters should be available at the local Council Offices for anybody to read if they’re really interested.

Any suggestion that Arsenal have somehow failed to deliver on the promises implied by these letters, by fielding a team totally devoid of any English players against Juventus is open to debate, but the fact remains that these facilities are available to anyone who is of sufficient ability and wants to play for The Arsenal, right in the heart of England.

I think the whole argument is making excuses for the fact that there are too few young players in England with the ability to make the grade. Plenty of English players (more than any other nationality, I’m sure) have benefited from these facilities, but precious few have turned out to be good enough for Arsenal, never mind England. This can hardly be blamed on Arsenal, who have at least tried and indeed have provided a decent living for young English players like Bentley, Sidwell, Pennant, Upson and Taylor, irrespective of the fact that they are now at different clubs.

What seems to escape everyone’s attention is the seeming total lack of English players who cannot gain a contract in their own country (presumably, because it’s full of foreigners), but who are prepared to try and make a career in any of the other countries which form the European Union. OK, so players from outside of England, Italy and Spain want to play in those countries for the lucrative contracts that are currently on offer, but does that mean that those left behind should just give up?

For that matter, does the fact that almost all of Argentina’s and Brazil’s best players decide to ply their trade away from their country of origin impede their national team? It certainly does not, it makes them a lot stronger. So perhaps it’s time to stop blaming the likes of Arsenal and start looking at our own players’ insular ambitions. Besides which, what the hell do we care? Arsenal are all that matters - not England, France or even bloody Belarus!!