I simply didn’t have enough English players to choose from... we still don’t

KEVIN KEEGAN is damning about the lack of players he had to choose from as England manager, a problem still facing current boss Gareth Southgate.

“There was such a dearth of English players that there were weekends when I would go to watch a Premier League match thinking, ‘What am I even doing here’?” he said. “Let me give you the example of Arsenal’s game against Chelsea at Highbury on 6 May 2000 and a meeting between the second and fifth-placed sides in the Premier League.

“Aimé Jacquet was two seats along from me on the same row. We were preparing to name our squads for Euro 2000 and can you imagine how demoralising it was to tot up the number of Englishmen on the pitch and realise the manager of France had more players out there than me?

“Of the 22 players, six were English. Four were in Arsenal’s colours: David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Tony Adams and Ray Parlour. Dennis Wise and Jody Morris were playing for Chelsea, and when the game kicked off I was running through a list of questions in my head.

“Did I need to watch David Seaman to know he was England’s first-choice goalkeeper? No. Was I going to learn anything about Tony Adams I didn’t already know? Probably not. Was there anybody else I should be watching closely? Not really.

“What you quickly come to learn with England is that it is only a great job if you have the right players. I inherited some brilliant old pros at a time, unfortunately, when many of them were coming to the end of their international careers.”