Gareth Southgate has warned that the England team are running out of players because of the Premier League’s increasing emphasis on foreign talent.
The Three Lions manager was speaking after naming his first post-World Cup squad for upcoming European Championship qualifiers with Italy and Ukraine.
But the new round of internationals comes after a recent weekend of Premier League games had only 28 per cent of starting players eligible for selection by Southgate. By comparison, on the opening weekend of the Premier League season in 1992, 70 per cent of starters were English.
“We want a healthy Premier League, healthy EFL and a healthy England team but the numbers are the numbers,” Southgate said. “The 28 per cent has happened a couple of weekends the last few weeks, and it has been around 32 per cent, down from 35 when I took over. It was 38 per cent in the years before.
“The concern would be the most recent trend – January, when there were 55 deals, 44 were players that were either new foreign players coming in or two that were here already. So that’s 80 per cent of the deals coming in through January were non-English.
“If we keep going in that direction it is clear that those numbers are going to drop again.
“And of course somebody has to think about the 10,000 kids that are in our academies. If nobody takes a position of trying to protect young English players and their chance then the numbers will continue in the same way.”
While Southgate predicts it could be “four or five years” before the problem really reaches crisis proportions, he is already feeling the impact of a lack of depth in certain positions.
“It becomes more complicated. What’s the best way to judge our players? The Champions League,” Southgate said. “If you look at Champions League minutes this year we are sixth on that list – we’re actually behind Brazil and Portugal. In the Europa League we are about 12th on the list of minutes in that for this season.
“We’ve got four left-footed left backs in the league at the moment so we will have to start looking in the Championship or elsewhere because the additional part for us is we don’t export many players.”
The current problem explains why Kalvin Phillips retained his place in Southgate’s squad despite not having started a league games in 10 months, with the manager pointing out Declan Rice is the only other English player whose preferred position is as a defensive midfielder.
Southgate’s squad also featured Ivan Toney, who faces FA censure over allegations of gambling, and Kyle Walker whose actions on a night out are being investigated by Cheshire police. The England boss did confirm, however, that Walker’s position could change, depending on the response of the police.
“I don’t want to go too much into hypotheticals but as we sit here today there was no conclusive reason not to select him in the squad,” said Southgate.
“If that changes then we’ve got to review the situation. And he would understand that as well, but at the moment we are where we are.”
As for Toney, after the Brentford striker missed the World Cup, Southgate was happy to offer him the call-up despite his off-field issues.
“The fact is he is playing for his available for his club, there hasn’t been a trial or any judgement so I don’t know on what basis we wouldn’t pick him,” said Southgate.
Injured Chelsea striker Raheem Sterling misses out and there is no reprieve for Trent Alexander-Arnold whose poor form for Liverpool has come under scrutiny of late.
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