Arsenal have recently introduced an initiative called “Arsenal For Everyone” which is designed to promote inclusion in the game and end racial discrimination (this to my mind includes discrimination based on nationality) in the game. Ever since this was launched UEFA, the media and even the flagship for players rights the PFA have been trying to destroy this initiative by blaming England’s exit from Euro 2008 on Arsene Wenger’s “you can play for Arsenal if you’re good enough no matter who you are or where you come from” policy, and by trying to force through the “you can only play in the Premier League if you’re English” policy.

The latest instalment in the “foreign players are to blame for England winning nothing” saga is the melodramatically titled “Meltdown” report published by the PFA, which claims that foreign players are killing English talent. The old maxim that the best players will rise to the top has been well and truly forgotten, and now to protect our “best” English players we must restrict the number of foreigners playing Premier League football.

What this really shows is the lack of confidence in the ability of English youngsters to compete against their foreign counterparts on a level playing field (as is displayed at Arsenal, an equal opportunities club where English players such as Bentley, Sidwell, Pennant and many more were judged not good enough by Arsene’s high standards), and that to make things “fair” the more talented, hard working and low cost foreigner players must be removed to allow the development of mediocre, lazy and high maintenance English players.

The argument proposed in this report using rising foreign player numbers since 1992 also flies in the face of logic. By publishing it the PFA is telling me that the current England team would be a hundred times better if they were playing against other English players week in week out. Don’t make me laugh! Between 1966 when England won the World Cup thanks to a foreign linesman and 1992 when the Premier League was born English players were playing against each other all the time (and also against the Scottish, Welsh and Irish, who in the eyes of the media don’t count as foreign because their names sound English) and won nothing, and no one blamed the foreign chaps then!

It also implies that currently the best English players are not playing for England but for some pub team, their chance at greatness having been cruelly snatched by some foreigner. The way academies work, or at least the way they should work (anyone remember Chelsea’s “Football Icon” folly on Sky One, how fair was that!) is that they pick the players they think have a chance of succeeding in the first team at a later date, and base this solely on football-playing ability. The idea that an English hot prospect has been cast aside because he is English is laughable, but how else are these foreign players stifling English youngsters development!

The idea that the influx of foreign players has somehow damaged the England national team is a flawed argument that does not stand up to reality. Unfortunately in this country there is a latent fear of anything “foreign”, anything that does not conform to a familiar pattern, and this leads to a paranoid xenophobia creeping in, which unfortunately for Wenger means that instead of being heralded as the man who exposed the flaws in the English coaching system (which focuses far too much on playing matches rather than coaching technique), he is crucified in the press and denounced as a foreign devil who is killing English football with his foreign ways.

Sadly I fear that if the powers that be pay any attention to Meltdown, it will no longer be “Arsenal For Everyone” but “Arsenal For Englishmen”, and our beloved club with its wonderful football and unparalleled diversity will be destroyed by bodies that are supposedly all for equality!