did you know that...

[stokemaveric]

tim howard [the everton goalkeeper] has scored more goals and had more assists than england/liverpool midfielder stuart downing this season..my point being is how on earth can downing be included in the squad for euro 2012???..certainly not on merit going on that statistic...

[ELVIS68]

He won a Mars competition!

[TTG]

Terry is a worse stat for Euro 2012 than Downing ever will be. That man should not be any where near an England shirt and I am not talking about his (lets face it...lack of) football "ability".

[Philtaz]

That's just it Steve. I don't expect England to make a marke dimprovement anytime soon as a result of the amount of foreign players in the EPL.

Young English players have very limited opportunities as a result. But how to fix it? Maybe a leaf could be taken from cricket, whereby only one overseas player is allowed to play for a county side. Obviously cricket squads are smaller, so maybe EPL teams could be limited to say 5, no more than that.
IMHO it's the only way young players can make headway and one day hope to be deemed good enough to play for the national side.

[joeluke]

Downing is a very average Premiership player, if he's good enough to play for England then so am I!

[HowardKennitby]

I seem to remember that David Moyes raised this subject some time ago. As I understand it he was advocating that the senior EPL clubs should be able to run 'B' teams in lower divisions in a similar manner to how it is in Spain. My recollection is that he was soundly condemned for his 'foolishness'.
I think that if England wants to achieve anything at international level young English players have to be encouraged and properly trained and that would be one way of doing it.

[Mick-Talbot]

I did know that, Stokie but Tim Howardis American