The England players are high on ego mediocre in talent, so let's put the Euro 2008 disaster behind us and bring in the youngsters.''What happened?'', I hear you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. We got nothing less than we deserved, and not even a red-faced, balding individual as charismatic as a Dyson could redeem us.At a glance it appears like a bomb went off and we’re all picking ourselves up from the fallout - but my argument is that this simply is not the case. Granted, look anywhere now and you’ll see a frantic media looking for where to plunge the knife. The first port of call has been, of course, Steve McClaren. Fair enough, he wasn't what I perceive as material for the job and certainly wasn’t the FA’s first choice so one cannot be too surprised to see he failed to deliver.So he’s gone now, but who next to blame? Foreigners! Yes, if it wasn’t for all those overseas players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Claude Makelele et al, then we would not be in this situation of profound disappointment. What’s that I hear you say? Well, if you are a fan of a team like Arsenal (only because of their surplus of migrants - not because of some silly notion like Arsenal fans are more intelligent) or indeed, anyone reasonable and open-minded enough to scoff at the ridiculous nature of these allegations, you will brush this argument aside quickly enough.

Yes, fans of rival teams might jump on the bandwagon, fuelled by their desire to slate the aforementioned side. But realistically, it is fair to say that the consensus that foreign players are affecting the development of indigenous talent is wide of the mark. The best players will always make it, but as Harry Redknapp so aptly put it, the problem it seems is that “football cannot compete with an X box”.Perhaps it’s true but I don’t believe it. If you look at the squad of the last four or so years, you cannot travel far without hearing that dreaded phrase - “The Golden Generation”. This has shrouded our players from reality, the over-hyping tendencies of the British media have blinded us to common sense.

Let me take you back to that point earlier on foreigners. Without Ronaldo and Makelele, I genuinely believe things would have been different. Think about it, would Wayne Rooney look so good without Ronnie or would Frank Lampard have been such a decent goalscorer over the last few seasons without Claude faithfully, excellently and silently freeing him of defensive duties?
Ironically, the bigots in the media have got it right, but for all the wrong reasons; our English players have been made to look better amongst a glut of technically superior imports. Imports who think quicker and are more tactically-minded.Look at some of the great players of the past ten years: Zidane, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Figo, Seedorf, the list is endless - but how many Brits constitute being mentioned? Any? David Beckham could qualify and it would be fair to include the likes of David Platt and Paul Gascoigne, but those aside how many English players today would you put alongside these guys?

It could be argued that with this Golden Generation term being coined, a lot of these players started to believe they really were. Arsene Wenger pointed out how since ’66 England haven’t won anything, and how many migrant footballers did you see muddying our side of the pond in ’94? As a nation, the sooner we come to realise that our players are mediocre, the better - they are the product of a failing academy system that needs to be centralised by the FA. The plans had been in place to do exactly that at Burton-on-Trent until the Wembley fiasco caused them to run out of funding so it’s strange not more people have picked up on it.It’s time we took the spotlight off our national team. There's no escaping it - we’re crap. We have to dig deep, take a long look at our team, make some brave changes and start afresh. The likes of Aston Villa's Ashley Young and Gabby Agbonlahor, Theo Walcott of Arsenal and Blackburn's David Bentley should be given their chance and should be given it now.We will no doubt drop outside the FIFA seedings for the World Cup and will probably face some of the best nations come the 2010 qualifiers. So these boys need to get used to International football before any important matches come up.