Home-grown talent foreign to English game

SOCCER ANGLES:Money rules as never before in the game across the Channel and even Roy Keane followed the green stuff when he pitched up in Ipswich

FOLLOW THE money. That was the instruction from Deep Throat during Watergate and it was also the advice regarding George W Bush, Saudi oil and the invasion of Iraq. Deep Threat, they called that one.

English football is hardly in the same league, never mind the same division as the above, but the same economic impulse applies and from Manchester to Ipswich, Southampton to Stockport and on up to Accrington, this has been another week in which following the money has been a zigzag often as perplexing as it is instructive. It was a week when even the term “English football” has been called into question.

If we begin on Tuesday at Anfield and that mesmerising 4-4 match between Liverpool and Arsenal, when a Russian scored four, a Spaniard two and an Israeli two, and each side started with a solitary Englishman, then it is legitimate to ask what station the Premier League gravy train has reached. This was a night to take stock.

Nationality is not an original question, of course, but when in years to come the 4-4 is analysed, the provenance of both sides will surely be noted. Why have the players of eleven countries pitched up in England in 2009? Why are the managers Spanish and French? Why are the owners from America and elsewhere?

Some will see the Hillsborough events commemorated at Anfield the previous week as a starting point in the complete changing of the national character of the game. In the emotional 1989 FA Cup final that followed Hillsborough, Liverpool and Everton fielded one starter from outside Britain or Ireland – Bruce Grobbelaar. There were 10 Englishmen on the pitch in total, if Liverpool substitute Barry Venison is included. He replaced Steve Staunton.

Two decades seems a long time but that still represents rapid cultural change from the line-ups announced on Tuesday night.

Politics and economics were revolutionised by the breakaway Premier League three years later and the effect was deregulation. By the 1994 Cup final both Manchester United and Chelsea had foreign goalkeepers – Peter Schmeichel and Dmitri Kharine – and a trend was under way. English football was, increasingly, where the money was and Chelsea’s centre backs that afternoon, Jakob Kjeldberg and Erland Johnsen, followed it from Denmark and Norway.

Who could blame them? This is not a complaint, but we are somewhere else now. Tuesday at Anfield was not truly English football, it was football of an English culture played in an English setting. But it was not played by many English men.

That is more a disappointment than a fault. If there is not a scarcity of English footballers of the required quality, there is a shortage. Ten minutes after walking in the door at Portman Road on Thursday, Roy Keane mentioned that. “Leaders and characters,” he said were dwindling: “Definitely fewer with each generation.”

Keane has followed the money to Suffolk. That is not an accusation. Keane had been made offers before Ipswich Town came on the phone and had declined. According to a predecessor at Ipswich, Bobby Robson, “investment” is as important a word in football as any other and in Marcus Evans, Keane now has a proprietor capable of funding an upwards surge.

That Evans has made a chunk of his fortune from the sort of sporting corporate hospitality Keane demonised in his prawn sandwich remark is one of those compromises we all make, even Keane. If Evans were not at Ipswich, Keane wouldn’t be either.

Keane spoke of the “challenge” facing him, but like a sensible man he has taken one he knows he can win. If Keane had really wanted a challenge he could have gone to Southampton. On the afternoon Keane was speaking a bit too bitterly of the end at Sunderland, the Football League were deducting Southampton 10 points due to the parent company which owns the club having entered administration.

But for Leeds United’s meltdown, Southampton’s demise would be the biggest story in Administrationville. Six years ago they were in the FA Cup final.

What has happened to Southampton’s finances since is probably specific. But speaking to an analyst of these affairs on Thursday afternoon, Southampton are part of a pattern. Along the coast at Bournemouth there is fear that not enough money will see them disintegrate in the summer.

Then there is Stockport County. On Keane’s Cheshire doorstep, they would have offered a serious challenge. But they have no funds.

For last night’s match against Crewe, Stockport were relying on a donation from ground-sharing rugby club Sale Sharks to pay for policing that would enable fans to attend. You follow the money in football and you end up in rugby union.

Or in a bookmaker’s shop in Accrington. The Football Association yesterday extended by a fortnight the time for five Accrington Stanley players to explain why – allegedly – last May they placed thousands of pounds on Accrington to lose at home to Bury. The FA have been investigating and have followed the money to Merseyside.

Some of the basic wages of Accrington players could be seen as an explanation for why something like this could happen.

Danny Mannix is one of those under scrutiny. Good enough to play for Liverpool’s under-17s as a 13 year-old, Mannix has slipped down football’s scale. Presumably at Anfield he will have seen players he may deem to be less naturally gifted go on to be comfortable.

He may even have watched Tuesday night’s game at Anfield and thought to himself of what might have been. English football as it exists could have made him a millionaire substitute. I’ll bet he’s thought that.

Liverpool achieve in loss

ON HIS return Keane immediately called into question the managerial "success" of former Manchester United colleagues Mark Hughes and Steve Bruce. Until one wins a trophy of note, neither can consider himself a success, although for a while there at Sunderland it did appear Keane had accepted a broader appreciation of achievement.

The thought recurred around the time Yossi Benayoun made it 4-4 at Anfield on Tuesday night. Liverpool were easing themselves out of the League title race not long after being eliminated from the Champions League.

Yet in being part of invigorating matches against Chelsea and Arsenal, Rafael Benitez's drilled team had made it easier to like them. Liverpool are less difficult to warm to than a month ago, an achievement, however small.