Whoever Steve McClaren’s England successor is, he will have to rebuild the team using players from a league whose English influence is diminishing. Amid controversy over a lack of English players in first-teams across the English Premier League, the Telegraph looks at the hard numbers, using the starting 11 from each EPL team over the weekend.
So, how many English players will the national team’s new manager have to draw from? Sixty-eight — that’s how many English players started Premier League matches this weekend (Manchester United and Fulham, which play Monday, were excluded from the results), according to the Telegraph, which averages out to 2.91 per team, or 34 percent of those who started matches this weekend. Overall, there were 100 total English players used, which averages out to 35 percent of the total, or 5.6 players per team.
Derby County, the last-place team in the EPL table, used the most English players, 11, while first-place Arsenal used the fewest, 1. In goal, seven of the 18 starting goalkeepers were English, while just one of the 11 available English strikers started this weekend. However, Englishmen certainly delivered in the goals department. Of the 22 goals scored this weekend, eight were scored by English players, who also added five assists. Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard and Blackburn’s David Bentley were the weekend’s best-performing Englishmen, with average ratings of 9.5 and 8.5 respectively.