Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neill deserves the plaudits he’s currently receiving for taking his young and exciting side into fourth place in the English Premier League, writes Gabriele Marcotti. But please spare him all the nonsense that the team’s success is down to its “English spine.” He wonders, “Why is that praiseworthy? Because English players are somehow worse and so, therefore, winning with ‘an English spine’ is more difficult? I don’t think so.”
This professed spine is hardly built around local lads, he says. “Zat Knight and Gabriel Agbonlahor are the only guys who can be described as local,” he continues. “Most of the other English players hail from the South East or London.” Except for Craig Gardner (yet to play this season in the EPL), Gareth Barry and Agbonlahor, “every English player who has received significant playing time at Villa was bought by O’Neill with cold hard cash.”
There is “no inherent merit” in having an English spine, and “in any case, an English spine can be assembled by any muppet with a big check book. O’Neill has done well, but his player’s passports have nothing to do with it.”