T ome, it's always been quite clear we give British players a preferential treatment, mostly because they are home-grown. Still, we have players like Jones and Williams earning >£50k/week when Bruno is not on much more than that and he's supposedly a star signing.
As for my Brexit FC remark, it's more to do with all the idiotic talk of culture and how that's somehow more important than bringing the best technicians and winning football games. The amount of times people on this forum go on about influence in the dressing room, you'd think this is the most important thing. It's only secondary after you get the football on the pitch to the right level, yet we are somehow obssessed with this culture talks, as if we are some corporate shill.
Jones’ contract was clearly a misstep - but we did exactly the same with Rojo and recently Bailly.
I’m pretty sure we pay Pogba, DDG, Cavani and Martial pretty bloody well - no idea who our highest paid Englishman is… Rashford maybe - but you are looking for for things that aren’t there.
of course we give young players from the academy a chance. It’s both sensible business sense and part of our culture - how many continuous match day squads have we had an academy player in?
Secondly, we need to have a certain number of home grown and academy players as part of the named squad, and the youngsters outside of this provide valuable additional depth. Try looking at the nationalities in our U23s.
If you look at Williams, as you brought him up - I could toss a coin to decide who is better him or who had performed better out of him and Dalot. One came from the academy, the other cost nearly £20m.
You can’t build a squad by buying everyone in. You need a decent mixture of academy players, PL proven, and players from different leagues.
when we talk about culture, that encompasses attitude, winning mentality, mindset. Here’s four players who have it… Maguire, Cavani, Bruno, Rashford. Those are exactly the type of players we need. No more Falcao, Schweinsteiger, Depay, Lukaku and Di Maria types of players.
the four i mentioned have that nice mix of PL proven, academy and players from different leagues. We want more of these.
and back to Williams, and before him the likes of Cleverely, Richardson etc - they aren’t world beaters, but you need strength in depth and you need youngsters to come and and play games. It’s no shame if they don’t make it, they will go on and have decent careers elsewhere.
Maguire deserves to be captain, and PORTUGUESE Bruno deserves to be vice captain.