Wenger defends his foreign legion
Arsene Wenger defended his decision to field Arsenal's first entirely overseas squad in their 5-1 victory against Crystal Palace as he insisted: "I don't look at players' passports."
With Ashley Cole ill and Sol Campbell injured, there was not a single British player representing Arsenal on either the pitch or the substitutes' bench in last night's game at Highbury.
Wenger said: "I didn't know about that until I was told about it. I don't look at the passport of people, I look at their quality and their attitude."
He joked: "Sven-Goran Eriksson was here, so who did he watch then? Has he signed for a different country?"
Wenger - the first foreign manager to win the Double in England in 1998 - had few alternatives, given that Justin Hoyte was injured, while Jermaine Pennant is on loan at Birmingham, Ryan Smith is still a teenage prospect and Stuart Taylor is third-choice goalkeeper. But it still demonstrated the lack of homegrown talent now coming through the ranks at Arsenal, with many of the club's exciting youngsters having been recruited from abroad.
Their 16-man squad last night featured six Frenchmen, three Spaniards, two Dutchmen, one Cameroon international, one German, one Ivory Coast international, one Brazilian and one Swiss national. Even when Chelsea fielded the first overseas line-up in English football at Southampton on Boxing Day 1999, there were still four young English players on the bench - Jody Morris, Jon Harley, John Terry and Mark Nicholls.
At Arsenal only Cole has come through the ranks to become a first-team regular in recent seasons, although Matthew Upson has played for England since moving to Birmingham.
Earlier this month, UEFA introduced minimum numbers of homegrown players for their club competitions for the season after next.
The 25-man squads for the Champions League and UEFA Cup will have to include two players whom they have trained and two who have been reared in the same country, with the figures rising to four in each category by the 2008-09 campaign. UEFA would also like to introduce the quota system into domestic competitions.
