[hawksbay]

Originally Posted by 2centsworth

It would be great to see home grown talent. Here in Singapore, we don't get as much news about up and coming talent from the Academy, which is why I highlighted the article. Hope he does well.



Bro, those were in the early days of the EPL. I remember Fowler missing sitters and tripping on the ball as he was dribbling. Doubt youngsters these days will be given as much time to develop.

I was watching a recent documentary that details the 20th anniversary of the EPL. The EPL was partly set up to reverse the talent drain in the league. This is partly due to the 5 year ban from 1986-1990 for British clubs in European competitions due to the Heysel tragedy. Back then, top players like Rush, Gazza, David Platt were playing overseas. The top talent of Holland, Italy, Germany seldom play in the First Division. British players were given more time to develop.

With the subsequent success of the EPL, European talent soon flooded the EPL and British talent in the top clubs aren't given as much time to develop. Actually, I think Mellor could have made it if we had given him more playing time. Mellor can't be worse than Voronin right? His scoring record in the Reserves was impressive. Both Danny Murphy and Stephen Warnock continue to feature regularly in the EPL. I thought Murphy was good. After he left, it's like we had a gap in the right midfielder slot which we tried to solve with several players like Nunez, Gonzales, Kewell and finally chose a striker (Kuyt) to fill in the gap. How come we will sell Murphy in the first place? Murphy was combining well with Cisse in pre-season before Murphy was sold.

if u look at the spanish,germans and italians most of them play in thier own leagues thats why they have won the world cup and the euros,ur home league got to be strong in order for ur national sides to do well in internationals.spanish teams dominated by barca and madrid,germans by bayern and dortmund,italians by the top four clubs of thier league.brazil won thier first 3 world cups with players frm thier local league.