In a recent interview, Alex Ferguson said that it was his duty to produce English players, because nobody else was going to. Whether he intended it that way or not, the media interpreted it as a pop at Arsene Wenger and Arsenal, and probably a bit at Liverpool as well.

Of course, this all comes on the back of England's defeat to Croatia, and their generally bad football over the last year, and how all this is somehow the fault of foreign players coming in, and how clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool don't produce enough English players. Of course clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea are hailed for having "English souls" and whatever else, but that's really a lot of crap. It's easy for the two richest clubs in the country to go out and spend 10-20m on an English player and then claim that they have homegrown players. It's also nonsense.

So I thought i'd take a look at the two clubs named as the big "saviours" of English football, and see just exactly how many English international players they've "produced".

From the England squads, Manchester United have Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick, Gary Neville, Wes Brown, Owen Hargreaves, Rio Ferdinand and Ben Foster. Which is fine I suppose, it's nice to have 7 England internationals, and I guess Alex Ferguson can be proud of that. But when it's used as stick to beat other clubs and managers with, then it becomes very, very unfair, because how much did these players cost?

Well, Rooney cost £27 million, Carrick cost £18m, Hargreaves cost £17m, and Ferdinand cost £33m. Ben Foster was a £1 million buy from Stoke, and ONLY two players - Gary Neville and Wes Brown - are from United's "famed" youth setup. Well, that's a total cost of £96 million! It's easy to brag about your "English core" when you're filthy rich isn't it!

And Chelsea? Well they have Ashley Cole, Wayne Bridge, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Shaun-Wright Pillips. Once again, errr... well done for having all these Englishman in the squad, but again, how many have Chelsea produced? Just one - John Terry. As for the rest? Ashley Cole cost about £17 million (£5m + William Gallas), Wayne Bridge cost £7m, Frank Lampard cost £11m, Joe Cole cost £7m and Shaun Wright-Phillips cost £21m. Total cost: £63 million.

Chelsea and Manchester United spend more on their beloved English players than most clubs (Arsenal included) do in 2 or 3 seasons on ALL their players. And how many can you say are worth it? Is Owen Hargreaves really worth £17m when Mathieu Flamini cost £1m? Is Rio Ferdinand really worth £33m when Kolo Toure cost £750,000? Is Wayne Bridge worth £7m when Patrice Evra was only £4.5m? And Michael Carrick £18m when the far superior Xabi Alonso was only £11m? There's a reason that clubs look abroad for players, and it's not because they dislike English players or want to harm English football, it's because the prices and hype that surrounded even a moderately talented English player are ludicrously high, and clubs other than Chelsea and Manchester United can't really throw the money around.

In any case, we've seen that between them, Chelsea and Manchester United presently have only three club-produced England internationals in their squads. So why don't we look at the recent England squads, and the number of players that have been club-produced by the "Big Four", and when they won their first caps:

Manchester United: Gary Neville (1995), David Beckham (1996), Phil Neville (1996), Wes Brown (1999)
Arsenal: Ashley Cole (March 2001), David Bentley (September 2007)
Liverpool: Steven Gerrard (2000), Michael Owen (1998)
Chelsea: John Terry (June 2003)

OK, so Manchester United have the most home-produced players of those 4, but the most recent cap of them all was Wes Brown in 1998, and he's not even that important. They're basically still living off the reputation of their much vaunted "Golden Generation", but the fact is that United have not produced a decent English player in years and years, and their present crop are decidedly ageing and average at the ages of 32, 31, 32 and 28.

And I'd like to follow that up by asking you which club from the "Big Four" has produced the most number of players to be capped in this decade? Well the answer to that, funnily enough, is Arsenal! Two is not a large number, but it's certainly more than Manchester United have given to English football in the last 7 years. And if you look at the recent England youth squads, you will find that it's Arsenal who are producing the most talented young English players, and in good numbers as well. Surely this can only be because of their foreign manager, and all the incredibly talented foreign players that are there in training and on the field?

Incidentally the two clubs that have contributed the most to recent English squads are Leeds and West Ham. Leeds - Aaron Lennon, Paul Robinson, Alan Smith, Scott Carson, and Jonathan Woodgate
West Ham - Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Frank Lampard and Jermain Defoe (although the latter was schooled mostly at Charlton)

Statistics from the European Football Players' Labour Market have shed some interesting light on the trends in the major European league. With all the discussions in England about the lack of English players making the national team unsuccessful, and Blatter's looming attempts at imposing homegrown rules, statistics from other leagues throw the whole issue in doubt.

The 2006-07 review was based on 2,744 players employed by the 98 clubs in the 5 top European leagues (England, France, Spain, Italy and Germany), and 24.3% of these were "homegrown". This was a 2.5% decrease on 2005-06 results, and France was the worst affected with a 6.8% DECREASE in home-grown players, although they still had the highest percentage of homegrown players with 33.3%.

The lowest percentage was in Italy, where only 14.6% of the players were homegrown. Take note of this all those people who complain about foreigners ruining the English national team - who won the last World Cup?

Overall, the amount of foreigners in these leagues has increased by 0.5% to 38.9% overall, with the Premier League being the most international, with 55.5% foreigners.

Regarding the foreigners with the most numbers, Brazil is the most represented country with 140 players. The USA has had the highest increase in exported players of any nation, and foreigners from Eastern Europe, North America, Asia & Oceania have increased overall, with the number of Western Europeans and Latin Americans decreasing. There are 92 nationalities represented in these top 5 leagues.

Group A
Liverpool
Porto
Marseilles
Besiktas

Group B
Chelsea
Valencia
Schalke
Rosenborg

Group C
Real Madrid
Werder Bremen
Lazio
Olympiakos

Group D
AC Milan
Benfica
Celtic
Shakhtar Donetsk

Group E
Barcelona
Lyon
Stuttgart
Rangers

Group F
Manchester United
Roma
Sporting Lisbon
Dynamo Kyiv

Group G
Inter Milan
PSV
CSKA Moscow
Fenerbahce

Group H
Arsenal
Sevilla/AEK Athens
Steaua Bucharest
Slavia Praha

Well... ticket sales for this years Champions League Final (Athens 2007) seem to have ended up in a right old mess. I'm watching it on TV at the moment (as the poor and distant are wont to do), and things seem noisy enough so i'd hope that most of the loyal fans who tried their best to go have managed to, but there has been an unhappy sinister note to the way the whole thing has been handled.

* WHAT A ROULETTE FROM KAKA! *

Anyways, sorry... back to the business. The first big problem, is that forged tickets have flooded the market - there are said to be in excess of 1500 tickets, and arrests have already been made, although the number in circulation is thought to be huge. Many fans had bought tickets in advance, and some are concerned that these might now be fake , which is heartbreaking considering that the minimum paid was probably about €400.

* TYPICAL OPPORTUNISM FROM PIPP INZAGHI, MILAN 1-0 UP. STUPID HALF-TIME PANELISTS SAY HANDBALL, I SAY WATCH THE REPLAYS PROPERLY *

Fans have also been sadly let down by the system in this case. The Spiros Louis Stadium holds only 63,000, so the per club allocation of roughly 17,000 tickets was never that large to begin with. Fans have thus had to go around to all manner of touts and ticket agencies to try and find those golden tickets, and have these been very vulnerable to trouble. Many ticket agencies sold packages to clients without having the requisite number of tickets in hand, and they did so in anticipation of ticket prices falling, and subsequently making huge profits. Unfortunately that never happened, and so several hopeful fans have been left in the lurch. The majority of these agencies simply took the money and ran, and obviously since the deals were dodgy to begin with, the clients could do nothing.

Travel & sports travel companies weren't much better - most of them refunded the ticket cost (face values) to the fans, but kept the travel expenses portion of it - presumably under the argument that said fans could still have gone and had a holiday and stay in some hotel.

* SECOND HALF AND LIVERPOOL ARE 2-0 DOWN. PERFECT FINISHING FROM PIPPO INZAGHI AGAIN, AND MILAN HAVE SHOWN THEIR PEDIGREE *

Adriano Galliani didn't help things this with his statements saying that only season ticket holders should receive tickets to the final (not sure how much this affected things, especially because Italian fans are the most notorious sellers of their tickets). When you consider the fact that Liverpool and Milan are two of the world's biggest and most popular clubs, it becomes obvious that the ex-pat and international fans would probably be travelling in numbers rivalling those of the local fans.

There is also the great story of the one Italian tour operator who was selling close to 3,000 ticket packages for the final, but actually had 0 tickets. He had anticipated receiving these tickets directly from Milan, and that never materialised. I'm not sure whether the fans eventually received any money back, but I hope they did. So much for the beautiful game eh?

* MILAN WIN. 2-1 AT FULLTIME WITH A CONSOLATION GOAL FROM KUYT. HE WAS OFFSIDE WHEN CROUCH FLICKED IT ON, BUT IT TOUCHED MALDINI ON THE WAY THROUGH AND SO IT STANDS. IT WAS A SCARE FOR MILAN, BUT THEY COMFORTABLY WRAP THE GAME UP, AND IT WAS MEN vs BOYS REALLY *