We give you what you want… and you just abuse it

Funny how you don’t hear so much about Arsenal killing the England team anymore.

The rise of Theo Walcott, Kieran Gibbs and Jack Wilshere has put to bed the ridiculous claim that because we don’t pay way over the odds for established English players, we are solely responsible for England not being able to beat teams ranked 18th (USA) and 55th (Algeria) at the World Cup.

Wenger has long said he can buy players just as good as their English counterparts from overseas, and at far cheaper rates.

He’s right. I’d take Robin van Persie over Andy Carroll, Darren Bent or Peter Crouch every day of the week. I’d take Fabregas and Nasri over any midfielders in the Premier League right now. And while our centre backs might not be as strong and secure as, say, Ferdinand (£30m), I wouldn’t swap Djourou or Vermaelen for Upson, Dawson, King, Carragher or any of the other English centre backs.

That said, now we have grown our own Englishmen, I will at least have reason to watch England. And I don’t mean that because I’m from the “England don’t matter to me because they have no Arsenal players” brigade. I say it because until now, watching England has been about as much fun as chewing batteries and the type of players we produce have the style, ability and flair to help change England from the one-dimensional, pedestrian, dull side that went to the World Cup. Wilshere, Walcott and Gibbs are all fast, attacking and full of creativity – which is what I want to see.

Of course, the biggest critics of Wenger’s foreign regime have been the tabloids and the talk radio stations – with that prick Adrian Durham saying recently: “England fans should be annoyed with Wenger for robbing the national team of potentially good players over the past ten years.” Well I’m annoyed with TalkSport for robbing me of intellectual football conversation and reasoned debate over the past ten years, instead making me listen to sensationalist, controversy-seeking pricks who spend their spare time dogging or sharing their favourite porn sites on their laptops. But I don’t go on about it…

Still, now we have a crop of English Arsenal players – and a load more likely to follow over the next few years - the press can at last get behind Arsenal and start talking up their English youths.

You’d think. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. Having spent years calling for Arsene Wenger to resurrect the national team by producing a few English kids, instead of getting behind them and encouraging them to success – as they do with Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard and Ferdinand – TalkSport’s response to Wilshere’s emergence in the England fold is to release this article entitled ‘Warning to Wilshere’. [Click here to read in full].

It outlines a selection of the most famous one-game wonders and “players who never lived up to the hype”, and carries the warning: “[Wilshere] would do well to heed the cautionary tale of half-a-dozen young starlets who turned out to be more hype than hope…”

Seriously. Here’s a radio station that spends 24 hours a day slagging off other nations, defending the likes of Rooney and Shearer because “you wouldn’t want to take that competitive edge out of their game” and calling for Wenger to supply the next crop of English players. When he does, they go out of their way to undermine them.

Well fuck ‘em. If I was at TalkSport and working as a presenter, I’d spend a little less time worrying about Wilshere’s performance and a little more time worrying about my own – in light of the fact that the two big bully boys from Sky have just walked through the door and eyeing the best presenting slots.

“Would you smash it?”