Subject: Putting ourselves in the hands of foreigners - football the paradigm for what is happening

Note: We are being asked to believe an absurdity, namely, that at the very point when foreign players, managers and owners flooded into the Premiership the supply of English talent began to dried up.

The truth is that the numbers of English players in the Premiership has been radically reduced because English players are not being given the opportunity. The outstanding example of this is Liverpool, where despite winning the FA Youth Cup two years in succession, not a single player has made it into the first team squad.

Those Liverpool teams were overwhelmingly filled with English players and they beat the youth teams of Arsenal and Man U which were packed with foreign players. As for Steve Coppell's view that English players could not play the Wenger way, that begs the question of whether we want them too.

English football has always been based on robust physicality. I for one wish it to continue to be so. RH

Daily Telegraph

Jose Mourinho slams Arsene Wenger's policy

Read comments Jose Mourinho claims he gave a helping hand to English football during his time as Chelsea manager - unlike Arsene Wenger. Uefa president Michel Platini recently criticised Wenger's policy of recruiting young players from abroad although the Arsenal manager has argued it is not his job to assist the England team.

Mourinho, however, does not hold back from criticising Wenger over his use of foreign players, claiming he had to use Englishmen such as Frank Lampard and John Terry at Chelsea to protect the reputation of Russian owner Roman Abramovich. Portuguese man of war: Jose Mourinho has criticisedWenger "Unlike Arsenal, we sought success and tried to build it through a concept of the game using English players," he says. ''That was to have a positive effect, on the dressing room and on the press, in terms of the image that the club would project. "We had to get players who fitted the profile of the team but without running the risk of filling the club with foreign players because that could bring us problems in handling the players in the dressing room and the press, which is sensitive to the use of English players and doesn't easily forgive clubs which misrepresent the championship with complete intakes of foreign footballers."

Mourinho, in a book called Jose Mourinho a Born Winner, adds: "Of course the animosity of the English against Abramovich was due to the idea that was established that the Chelsea owner was going to transform the club into a depot of players who came and went without any criteria other than spending money."

Former Busby Babe John Doherty has died at the age of 72. Doherty, who was chairman of the Association of Former Manchester United Players,made only 26 appearances for the club, before retiring aged 23 with aknee injury. He was a member of the 1955/56 title-winning team.