I wonder how much the PFA paid for their report, the Press Release of which is filling all of the back pages. Whatever it cost, they were tucked up like a kipper. Their findings are nothing new, entirely tedious and the solution so laughable that it begs the question as to whether or not their members’ best interests are being served by it.

The Daily Telegraph carried an outline of the report’s focus on Arsenal’s Academy. In seeking to highlight their points, the PFA appear to make some interesting interpretations of the facts. They claim only five players can be considered full graduates of the Academy system: Kerrea Gilbert, Ben Gill, Fabrice Muamba, Dominic Shimmin and Anthony Stokes. Interestingly, they have sought to erase other players who spent their entire ‘pre-professional’ careers at the club, namely Steve Sidwell, James Harper and Graham Stack. Why? They did not spend all of their time at the Academy because they were in the youth system already. This is disingenuous at best.

Clarification needs to be given as to why the PFA have chosen this route, particularly as the report spends some time comparing the Premier League statistics from 1992 onwards. However in their benefit is that the Report in full is not yet widely available; their website pointed to a story about Raymond Domenech from the link about how foreign players are ruining the English game. Sometimes the unintentional ironies are the best.

Gordon Taylor though does make it clear that Arsenal is not the focus of the Report.

Arsene Wenger is a manager you cannot help but admire and it is not his job to look after the interests of the England team. We have no issue with him bringing in young players from abroad such as Cesc Fabregas – at least in the Arsenal academy there is a level playing field for the young English players

This leads to the interesting contradiction in their findings. They want to improve the England team but by insisting that three homegrown players irrespective of their nationality are on the pitch at any one time. I have thought about that long and hard; how this helps England is beyond me so what is the point in the Report?

Arsene meanwhile found an ally in his views in Gianluca Vialli who summed up the problem with buying English players succinctly,

Shaun Wright-Philips is worth £20million because he’s English. If he were, say, Portuguese, he’d cost a quarter of that

Wright-Phillips is nowhere near the quality that you would expect when players cost that much so why should Arsene overpay because he is English. He has done so in the past and got his fingers badly burned with Francis Jeffers.

In the midst of the self-righteous indignation of the tabloids, Arsene cut to the chase,

You can close your eyes and not want any competition or you can open your eyes and say ‘we have the best players in the world here’ let us produce players of that quality

Therein lies the rub; the players are not good enough and irrespective of what people might say, Arsene only has a duty to Arsenal Football Club. Were they to accept that, solutions can be found but not through the half-witted use of quotas.

Theo Walcott is the subject of a piece in by Henry Winter. He recalls speaking to Arsene recently – It was daunting going up to him; a bit like going to the headmaster’s study – about why he what he had to do to get into the first team,

He said I needed to be more aggressive, not kicking people, but running at players, getting behind players, doing the stuff he bought me for. He put me in against Slavia Prague and the two goals helped. If I had played poorly, maybe I would be in his bad books. I put myself about that game

Walcott is undeniably talented but needs more consistency of performance to push for a regular starting line-up. He has youth on his side and would do well to consider Arsene’s words about quotas,

I prefer to tell a boy, ‘Listen my friend, you are not good enough. We are in a job that’s down to quality and I do not want to give you a job of just sitting on the bench because somebody in an office has decided that you need to be in the squad.’ It’s ridiculous and it’s unfair. It is better for that player to play in the second division, where he is one of the stronger players, than sitting on the bench at Arsenal and feeling he’s not good enough and with no respect from people around him

Arsene continues to include Walcott in squad’s and line-ups on a regular basis show a degree of faith in the player. He has time on his side and need not be in a rush to break through. That he is shows his desire to make it to the top. A bit more application and he will do so.

‘til Tomorrow.