Johan Cruyff, whose fairly useless son, Jordi, spent several years with the club, has today criticised United, amongst others, for the amount of foreigners we have in our team. He reckons football in general is suffering because of the foreigners we have in our league. Right.

“However much English teams reach finals or semi-finals, I’m sorry, I do not buy it,” said Cruyff. “And I don’t buy it because of the players they have out on the pitch, rather than because of the style they adopt. The vast majority of them have been brought in from abroad. There are very, very few Englishmen playing in the big English clubs. You only have to look at the Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United squads to realise that. The English national team – missing out on the last European championships – and football in general suffers as a result of them signing so many foreign players. Doing this weaknens the competition because it is impossible for every player they sign to play.”

Van der Sar, Brown, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Hargreaves, Scholes, Carrick, Ronaldo, Tevez, Rooney. Subs: Kuszczak, Giggs, Anderson, O’Shea, Fletcher, Silvestre, Nani.

Of the 18 players in the CL final squad last season, 6 of them were English. Of the 18 players, 9 of them were English/homegrown.

Looking at our squad this season, 14 players are English/homegrown (Ben Foster, Wes Brown, Jonny Evans, John O’Shea, Rio Ferdinand, Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Darron Gibson, Paul Scholes, Owen Hargreaves, Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck) meaning Cruyff is totally wrong to lump us in with the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.