TEN years ago, Dennis Bergkamp was an exotic arrival from abroad at Arsenal, but now his only novelty is his age. The Dutchman, 35, once stood out as a foreigner at Highbury, but his club’s desire to broaden its horizons when choosing new players reached an extreme conclusion on Monday when none of the 16 players on duty against Crystal Palace was English.
Bergkamp lined up with ten Englishmen on his first appearance for Arsenal, at home to Middlesbrough in the Premiership in August 1995, and the same XI went on to become the club’s most selected players in the league that season.
His regular team-mates were David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Steve Bould, Martin Keown, Tony Adams, Nigel Winterburn, David Platt, Ray Parlour, Paul Merson and Ian Wright. Of those, eight had been at the club since 1991 or before, underlining George Graham’s concentration on English talent during his time in charge. The exceptions were Keown, signed in 1993 from Everton having been a trainee at Highbury, and Platt.
Of the other 14 players to have turned out for Arsenal in the Premiership in 1995-96, six were not English: Glenn Helder (Dutch), John Jensen (Danish), John Hartson (Welsh), Steve Morrow (Northern Irish), Paul Dickov and Scott Marshall (both Scottish). None recorded more than 15 league appearances, though.
While the constitution of Arsenal’s team has been transformed during Arsène Wenger’s reign, that of Manchester United has barely altered. Of the 11 players who made the most league starts for the Premiership champions in 1995-96, six were English, a figure that has dropped to five so far this season.
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While foreign players have arrived in droves in England since the mid-1990s, there were successful teams before then that neglected home players. Liverpool did not field a single Englishman when they beat Everton in the 1986 FA Cup Final, but only Jan Molby (Danish), Craig Johnston (Australian) and Bruce Grobbelaar (Zimbabwean) were not from the British Isles.
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