Can you cast your mind back to the 19th September 2005? Rupert Murdoch was moaning in the press (which he owns) about China strengthening their resolve to limit foreign media intrusion in their country and the Pussycat Dolls were enjoying a breakout number one single with Don’t Cha (featuring Busta Rhymes). Not the most exciting of times it has to be said looking back but for Arsenal fans it was a milestone that over the next nearly sixteen months became more of a millstone around their necks. Or rather it should have for one simple reason: S*l Campbell scored twice to defeat Everton at Highbury and until the 3rd of January he was the last Englishman to score for the Gunners in Premiership football.

In a simple game of “Spot The Englishman” in Arsenal’s ranks it was obviously youngster Justin Hoyte who finally ended the sequence which managed to stretch over the whole of 2006 and beyond the post-New Year’s Eve hangovers into 2007. Most worryingly of all has been the complete lack of fanfare from within the club about this horrendous statistic and what it’s implications are for the English game and Arsenal’s future post-Wenger.

Wenger has always claimed that the lack of English blood in Arsenal shirts is a double edged sword based on lack of available quality and overpricing on behalf of selling clubs. The first point is a mystery as the rest of English football have been telling us for the past five years that this is the “Golden Generation” of English football and although the international performances have shown this to be more media glammer than hard truth, it’s hard to deny that this generation of English players isn’t a step up from that of the early and mid 1990s overall.

High transfer fees would be a suitable concern if Wenger wasn’t so happy to dip heavily into the Arsenal coffers when the need arises and send English money to foreign clubs. It’s hard to believe that poor little Arsenal can’t compete in the English transfer market when they are splashing £20m+ on Jose Antonio Reyes who was hardly proven international quality at the time of signing (or departure come to that).

The Arsenal youth system which in the past produced players like Tony Adams and Paul Merson (and by that I mean international footballers, not just alcoholics and drug addicts) now focuses on raping and pillaging foreign talent from all around Europe to the detriment of any potential young local talent. They may say that not enough local lads are off a high enough quality to make it into the Arsenal first team but there are wider implications. Many youth team players obviously don’t make the grade at the top clubs and move down the divisions to find their real level. In some cases they build on their early potential down there and return to find their place at the top table again. Peter Crouch is an England international case in point but with the falling number of young English players coming from clubs like Arsenal there is little or no chance of this happening. Arsenal don’t exist in a vacuum, English football at all levels needs them to be bringing on the skills of young English players and their short sighted approach is pure short term selfishness of the highest order.

Look through the list of the next England squad when Steve McLaren announces it and see where the players come from. Manchester United and Chelsea make up a large proportion, as do Tottenham with their well publicised “Buy Young British Players” policy to add to players like Ledley King who have came up through their ranks. How many Arsenal players would you expect to see and, before you answer, remember that it took a teenage reserve team fullback to score the first English goal in the Premiership in 16 months for them against a woeful Charlton side.

Another English goalscorer? See you in 2009.

Ghana captain Stephen Appiah has claimed that he turned down summer moves to both Barcelona and Arsenal in favour of staying with Turkish side Fenerbahce. My question is: why?

The quality of the Turkish league has been poor for several years since Galatasaray’s glory days ended and surely it wasn’t based on the quality of life that Appiah has in Istanbul compared to that which he could be enjoying in either London or Barcelona?

I really am mystified as to why a player at his peak and after a good showing in the World Cup would turn down big money moves to either of the two clubs who had just contested the Champion’s League.

Answers on a postcard please. For the record, I do think in missing out on Appiah, Arsenal lost their best chance to replace Patrick Vieira like-for-like and it could be one of the main reasons that their title challenge is more mathematically than realistically feasible before we’ve even had our Christmas turkey in 2006.

As I enjoyed my first cup of tea this morning and had a look through the Sun I was astonished to read that Arsenal have banned the flag of St George from the Emirates Stadium. Was it not Arsene Wenger last week who was warning of the foreign influx of businessmen to the premiership and how it would ruin the beautiful English game? Maybe he should have been looking on his own doorstep as well.

Do I stand alone on this one when I say that I think this is a dreadful turn of events. Correct me if I’m wrong but this is the ENGLISH Premier League and Arsenal are a London based team and London is the capital of ENGLAND. This is political correctness gone mad. Arsenal have released a club statement on the matter claiming “Some of our fans have been upset with flags denoting particular regions of the world. Arsenal prides itself on being inclusive with respect to all nationalities, cultural and ethnic groups”. It seems that the club may have forgotten its respect to England however and it would be interesting to see how many fans agree with the club’s policy on this matter.

Next thing we know the pies, burgers and chips will be banned as half time as they offend to be replaced with other more “cultured” offerings. Frog legs you say!

A new home, a new prospect of a fulfilling season ahead of them, the news of their captain staying, August really didn’t look a bad month at all for the Arsenal faithful. Now as we draw to the end of this current year it seems that the optimism at outset of the season has been severely dented. From lacklustre performances in the premiership, to a manager who refuses to criticise his team and exalts how well they play even when the fans realise it was a below par performance, to a manager who gets riled when another manager celebrates his team scoring.

A team sitting in third position at this stage should probably be happy but if Arsenal fans are honest with themselves they must be feeling frustrated. Ten points behind Chelsea and fifteen behind runaway leaders United has to leave a bitter taste in their mouths. It just seems that the Gunners have been outclassed this season and except for a victory over bitter rivals Spurs they have had little to smile about.
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I’m sorry but on reading the papers this morning I had to stifle a snigger as Arsene was again blaming Arsenal’s below par performances on everything and I mean everything but the team and himself. His spiel started off well enough stating that Arsenal are on the up and up and aren’t done with the title race yet but soon degenerated into a woe is me tale of bad times. What are the reasons for Arsenal’s title slump? Well lets take a brief peek at what Mr Wenger thinks:

1) Difficulty adapting to the new Emirates Stadium
2) World Cup in the summer
3) International Friendlies in August
etc.
etc.
etc.

The reasons are not original because Arsene has been using them from the start of the season. It seems that the man just needs to admit that his team are presently underachieving and take a long hard look at the team to discover where the problems lie. Over reliance on wonder Star Thierry Henry is bottling up problems for the future in my opinion, its not that the team don’t have a touch of class and decent players it just seems that without their icon on the pitch they look lacklustre and lost. He’s a manager who just won’t put the blame on the shoulders of his players and has asked the fans to judge them at the end of the season and only then citing that he is so happy with his squad that he won’t be adding to it in January.

His backing of the players is fair enough but with a match at Fulham tonight all eyes are on Arsenal to pull off a win and to give the fans a distant flame of hope but with Chelsea and Man United pulling away at the top can Arsenal find that “va va voom” to rescue their season. Its seems that it is time for Arsenal to prove exactly how great a team they are by actions on the pitch and with the match tonight, Tottenham and then Porto next on the bill this could make for an interesting week for the reds.

Let’s put this whole episode into context shall we? West Ham start the season with a couple of wonder boys on the books and proceed to have the kind of start every player, manager, chairman and fan all over world dreads. Being perfectly honest they’ve been abysmal and Alan Pardew knows just how close he is to the sack especially with a big money takeover of the club looming and the spectre of Svennis strolling past and eyeing up the comfiness of the chair in the Upton Park manager’s office. Let’s just say that it hasn’t been the easiest of seasons for Mr. Pardew.
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I won’t pretend that I didn’t sit watching some of the CSKA Moscow - Arsenal highlights with a smug grin after hearing the Goons had been beaten 1-0 behind the Iron Curtain and it got even better as I saw chance after chance go begging for the French Londoners before Theirry Henry finally nestled the ball in the back of the CSKA net.
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That great defender of goalkeepers’ rights and champion of wives and children, Jens Lehmann, has been speaking out today about the need to protect goalkeepers more and prevent some of his fellow professionals ending up in a wheelchair after a collision with an opposing player. Now we know why he carries on like a big Teutonic pushing jessie when the opposition have a corner and he is forced to withstand the threatened assault of an opponent standing in the six yard box - he’s only thinking of his wife and kids after all.

I don’t like Jens Lehmann. I think he’s been afforded far too much leniency in his time in England for a series of assaults on other players which would have been punished with long bans if carried out by some others with “certain reputations” such as Wayne Rooney and Edgar Davids and still this isn’t enough for Lehmann. After Petr Cech’s injury at the weekend I can understand goalkeepers being a little worried but it should be remembered that this was a freak accident and is hardly commonplace at any given time during a normal Premiership season. In fact I can’t recall a similar injury of that magnitude at all over recent times never mind a slew of them.
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Doesn’t really make sense does it? A Frenchman who has probably played a bigger part in bringing multitudes of foreign players into the English game over his ten year spell in charge of Arsenal than any other coach or manager and now he’s the one speaking out about the English game losing it’s English identity.

Come on Arsene, it might be an easy pop to have at the great evils of American held Old Trafford and Russian controlled Stamford Bridge but to try and take the moral high ground on issues of foreign influence in English football is more than just a bit rich when you’ve basically made Arsenal more French than most French clubs and have transformed the Arsenal Academy into a nurturing ground for he cream of European youth talent that you’ve pilfered from other clubs on the continent at the expense of bringing through young English players.

Wenger says:

“I feel the soul of football in this country is first granted by the owners of the clubs. Here, for example, at Arsenal I feel I am really at an English club.

“Traditionally the people who owned the clubs were first and foremost supporters. If that ceases to be the case then the clubs lose something.”

I notice no mention of the fans feeling alienated because of a foreign manager in the hotseat (of course not) or a first eleven filled with no domestic players (I mean that has no impact on the fortunes of the national side, does it?), it’s merely foreign ownership in the boardroom that destroys the integrity of clubs. What a coincidence that Arsenal is still English owned as Arsene says. The Wenger/Arsenal Ten Year Anniversary Love-In rumbles on.

I’m sure we’ve all read the plaudits being hurled at Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger for making it ten years not out in the Gooner hotseat but the most surprising one of all came from former nemisis and Manchester United bovver boy Roy Keane.

We all know that Keano has talked himself into a quieter number in the Championship as he tries to revive Niall “Mother Theresa” Quinn’s club’s fortunes and it has to be said that he hasn’t been doing too bad a job. The sight of an enraged Keane storming through the dressing room door while two down at halftime must literally scare the sh*t out of the assembled Mackems players and as a short term measure it looks like being a successful motivator.

Keane has always been a winner though and whether it was winning trophies for Manchester United or storming out of an underprepared World Cup camp for the Republic of Ireland he has always had his eyes on the biggest prizes and I think he might just be doing some buttering up for the future with his praise for Wenger today.

Keane said this (in a menacing Cork accent no doubt):

“He has done a brilliant job at Arsenal. I watched them last week against United and they were outstanding.

“The way they play the game, the way he leads himself - I have to say, the way he keeps his head or he seems to keep his head, even at the start of the season when people were starting to doubt Arsenal - maybe myself being one of them - I thought United would beat them.

“A manager at any top club like an Arsenal, a Liverpool, a United, has obviously got special talent.

“I read something about him the other day and a thing he said about football: he said some people live off football and some people live for football.

“He clearly lives for the game, I will give him that, and all credit to him. I wish him well.”

Could this really be the same Roy Keane who scrapped on and off the pitch with Wenger’s loyal lieutenant Patrick Vieira over a number of seasons and would have ran through brick walls for the cause of Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson? Maybe retirement has mellowed the Irishman or maybe now that his legs don’t get to do the talking on the pitch for him anymore he’s decided that a bit of diplomacy and a word in the right ears might just swing him a more high profile job a few years down the line.

Is it really so unlikely that he’s picked up some lessons in cunning from the grand master in all those years at Old Trafford? I think not.