10 Years Since an All English XI in the Prem

So I know that in the last post, I promised not to bang on about foreigners in the Premier League. And I’ll be sticking to that in the future, promise. But today is a special day.

It’s exactly 10 years to the day since the last all English starting XI took to the field in the English Prem.

The team was Aston Villa, managed by John Gregory, and it looked like this:

Michael Oakes, Gareth Southgate, Steve Watson, Riccardo Scimeca, Ian Taylor, Paul Merson, Simon Grayson, Lee Hendrie, Dion Dublin, Julian Joachim

The three subs used were: Mark Draper, Gareth Barry and Stan Collymore. Also English.

But since then, it’s never happened.

Which actually isn’t such a big deal. I would imagine it’s been a while since an all native first XI took the field in Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga or La Liga either (Athletic Bilbao excepted of course).

So the 10 year anniversary is a little misleading, because there’ve been teams with plenty of Englishmen since then. Just not a full fist XI.

The good news is that the modern Villa team are looking pretty good, and with plenty of Englishmen in the lineup too. The likes of Barry, Heskey, Young and Agbonlahor are squad regulars, Luke Young and James Milner are on the fringe and Curtis Davies might one day make the jump.

And the irony is that those players (especially the first four) are going to contribute a lot more to England than the likes of Oakes, Watson, Scimeca, Taylor, Grayson and Joachim ever could (though I’m not hearing a bad word against Dion Dublin, man’s a legend.)

If anything this proves that quality is way more important than quantity, so as long as we can pick 30 or so good players for England, then there’s not too much to worry about. Hopefully.