Fact or Fiction or Opinion?

I read the websites of most the major news papers in the UK to have a read of some of the different opinion columns, to see if some of them have seen things in a different light to me.  Some are good, some are bad and some are just stupid.  The this writer about one which I will write was brought to my attention only last week but has already driven me to write about him. James Lawton is a writer at The Independent, his piece on Tuesday in which he declared Messi to be a symbol of all that is wonderful about football as opposed to Suarez, who is all that is bad because of his handball goal against Mansfield, I was reminded of this incident.

Then he notes in his artcile today that: 'When Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who once plundered so brilliantly the best of his native France, recently signed a clutch of English-born players, including Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain...'

I will skip the obviously retard line about Jack Wilshere, who has been on the Arsenal books since he was nine and if James Lawton's definition of recently is 12 years otherwise I will spend to long on who is stupider footballers or football writers.  But I am going talk about his idea that Wenger brought French then and buys English now.

As you can see in the table below he was right about Wenger signing more french players at the start but he hasn't really stopped.  He may have not sign french players in two of the last four years, compared to one of the previous thirteen, he has still signed more French players than English players.  The only three, non academy  English players Wenger has signed in the last 10 years are Theo Walcott, Sol Cambell and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Signings by Arsene Wenger per Season

	1996 - 1997	1997 - 1998	1998 - 1999	1999 - 2000	2000 - 2001	2001 - 2002	2002 - 2003	2003 - 2004	2004 - 2005
French	1	2	2	1	3	0	2	1	1
English	0	1	0	1	0	3	0	0	0
	2005 - 2006	2006 - 2007	2007 - 2008	2008 - 2009	2009 - 2010	2010 - 2011	2011 - 2012	2012 - 2013
French	2	1	2	2	0	2	0	1
English	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	0

I will use this blog to rant an awful lot but i will always try and base my rants on some fact.  So I just find it annoying that someone gets paid to write about crap in a newspaper but as I am writing this now I have realised that that is the job of most journalists nowadays.


Trivia Questions 5

Q: Bradford are two goals up and one game away from getting in to the League Cup Final they would become the second fourth division to reach the final, who was the first and who did they lose to?

Answers to Question 4

Q: Who are the top 3 International goal scorers who have played in the English Premier League?

A: Stern John , 72, Trinidad & Tobago, Didier Drogba, 58, Ivory Cost and Robbie Keane, 54, Republic of Ireland