Premier League teams should NOT have to play English players, writes IAN LADYMAN. It is an elite competition that just happens to be played in England

It’s a strange thing for a football reporter to admit but the days of turning up to a match and knowing who you will find on the team sheet have gone.

Big squads, too many games and, yes, the smothering number of obscure foreign footballers have left the experience feeling a little different. There are 20 players on a Premier League team sheet these days and the chances are there will be another half-dozen – more if you are at Chelsea – sitting in their tracksuits in the stand.

Sometimes, it does jar. Does it feel strange to run my eyes down a Wolverhampton Wanderers team and see not a single English player as we did before they played Chelsea on Sunday? Yes, it does. 

This was the club that gave us Billy Wright and, later, Steve Bull. It wasn’t much different at Anfield on the same day, where Liverpool had only Trent Alexander-Arnold in their line-up.

Would I like it to be different? In an ideal world, I would. Supporting a football club is largely about identity. And despite what Manchester United fans may feel about Eric Cantona or Arsenal may tell you about Thierry Henry, that feeling flows a little more naturally if you are watching one of your own.

Raheem Sterling has been told by Enzo Maresca that he will not receive any minutes

Wolves did not start a single English player in their 6-2 defeat against the Blues at Molineux

Having said all that, the diminishing number of English players in our league doesn’t offend me. Not any more. The top division of English football not only represents the diverse and multi-cultural country in which I live, it also directly represents what our league has grown to become.

I often say to people that the Premier League is no longer an English football competition. It’s an elite football competition that happens to be played in England. If that concept offends you or jars with you then look at the facts.

Premier League clubs are largely in foreign hands in terms of ownership. The managers – 14 out of 20 – are from overseas. International broadcasters now pay more to show the matches than our own do. And yes, the players – the most important of all – are foreign too.

When people kick back at the concept of Premier League games being played abroad, it puzzles me a bit. Of course they will be. That’s the road we are on. That’s where the astonishing wealth of the Premier League has taken us.

This is the price we have paid for progress, if indeed you choose to see it as a price. I don’t see it that way any more. It’s futile.

14 of the 20 top-flight managers are foreign and so are the majority of players in the division

Gareth Southgate is worried the progress of young English players is not being encouraged

We have the best league in the world, don’t we? That is what we constantly tell ourselves. And that means the league is populated by the best players in the world. It’s the way it works.

Former England manager Gareth Southgate worries about all this. It’s one of his concerns about the future of the game and I do have sympathy. He is on record as saying that if something isn’t done to encourage the progress of young English players, future national coaches will be topping up their international squads with players from the Championship.

The truth is, though, that the pathways are there for English players and I am firmly opposed to any kind of quota system to try to help them along. The Premier League is an elite football competition, not a kickabout for kids on the local rec. It shouldn’t be the case that someone gets to join in simply because they may be upset at being left out.

The cream will always rise in sport. I firmly believe that. There is a snobbery in the English game when it comes to hiring coaches and managers. The English are not in vogue and its wrong. Just look at the names in charge of so many of our EFL teams. It’s alarming.

The very best players will make it. They will make it at clubs like Liverpool and the two Manchester clubs and at Arsenal. If you are good enough you will survive and thrive. And if you do then the benefits of playing alongside some of the best players in the world are clear and obvious. And if you don’t, there is a place for you further down the EFL food chain or indeed abroad. This is how top-level sport works.

But the truth is that the pathways are there for English stars and a quota system isn’t needed

The reality is that there are too many foreign players taking up spaces on the fringes of Premier League squads. It has, at least in part, become easier to buy one than grow your own.

And it was, for example, disheartening to see Chelsea shunt Conor Gallagher off to Spain simply to square a balance sheet stretched out of shape. Twenty years ago I would have worried about. But that ship has sailed. That can has been kicked so far down the road it’s impossible to still see it.

The Premier League has become what it is on the back of our voracious appetite for it – through our ticket and merchandise purchases and through our Sky TV subscriptions – and it’s pointless trying to change it. We have, for good and for bad, the league that we deserve.