Eight out of a possible fourty four players starting for United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal were English

As the title suggests, I'm going to be having a look at Manchester United's UEFA Champions League game at home to Wolfsburg, Manchester City's trip to Monchengladbach, Arsenal's game at home to Olympiacos and Chelsea's away trip to Porto as well as other games from this season and previous Champions League campaigns. United started the game with only two Englishmen, Smalling and Rooney and people have hugely differing opinions on the the topic and a lot of questions have been thrown around such as is the lack of English players just modern football? Is it even a problem? Can it be avoided in future? And does it really damage the England National team's future chances?

I'll start with the fact that all four of the English Champions League teams were guilty of lacking a respectable number of English talent as Cahill was the only English starter for Chelsea and Manchester City had Hart and Sterling to match United's two. Arsenal did better, however, only by one as Gibbs, Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain started for The Gunners. You could argue that if everybody was fit, the numbers could and should be higher as Arsenal were missing Wilshere and Welbeck, United were missing Shaw, Carrick, Jones and Young. City and Chelsea don't have the the same depth of English players but Terry and Loftus-Cheek could arguably have started for Chelsea and the same could be said for Delph for City. 

You would think that the number of English players has diminished over the years but surprisingly, it hasn't been by much. If we look back to the infamous treble winning Manchester United squad, there was a higher number of Englishmen but for the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, only Neville, Beckham, Butt and Cole started the game. Liverpool's dramatic 2005 Champions League win in Istanbul saw only two English players, Gerrard and Carragher, start the game. If we skip ahead to United's win over Chelsea in 2008, the numbers are a lot better as ten of the twenty two players who started the game were in fact English. Chelsea's 2012 Champions League win in Munich saw Chelsea start with Cole, Lampard, Cahill and Bertrand. The same amount that United started with in Barcelona thirteen years earlier. The numbers fluctuate over the years but there isn't a huge difference between now and fifteen years ago.

To judge if the lack of English players is a result of the modern game, we have to look across Europe at the other top teams. In PSG's 3-0 victory against Shakhtar Donetsk, there was only one French player, Matuidi, in their starting eleven. Atletico Madrid could only manage three Spanish starters with Juanfran, Gabi and Oliver Torres and Real Madrid had four Spanish players starting (Nacho, Carvajal, Arbeloa and Isco). Barcelona also had four as Pique, Busquets, Iniesta and Sandro Ramirez started. Even last season's runners up, Juventus, only managed four Italian starters for their 2-0 victory over Sevilla as only Buffon, Chiellini, Barzagli and Bonucci started. These show that it isn't only the English teams that are lacking local players as the majority of top European teams have very multi-cultural squads.

 If we want to use the lack of English starters as a possible reasoning behind the English national team's failings in major tournaments in recent years, there has to be a real correlation between the two and there really isn't much of one. With the squad that has been named for the upcoming England games, the players come from twelve different football clubs so it doesn't matter that a couple of clubs don't have many English starters because they are being spread around the other English teams. So although I personally would prefer to see six or more English players starting every game for the top Premier League clubs, it isn't the end of the world and the upside to having less English players is that it is exciting to see the great foreign players such as Alexis Sanchez, Anthony Martial, Eden Hazard, Yaya Toure and others in the Premier League.