No More Foreign Johnnies?

So what's the news this Monday morning? With Pardew confirming that he wants two more "senior" players after Saturday's thrashing of Gillingham and the addickted reporting that Thomas is valued at a hefty £8mill, to deter the Big Boys presumably, we can look forward to another few weeks of crazy transfer speculation before the window closes on August 31st. But things do seem to have settled down a bit and its only a selection of home-grown talent such as McLeod, Mullins and even Andy Cole that are rumoured to be coming.

After the rave reviews about Jose Semedo's performance against the Gills on Saturday in the defensive "holding" role, the first Addicks goal by new striker Svetoslav T, the attacking style of our new right-back Yassin Moutaouakil and the defensive partnering of Magic and Souley I got to asking myself just how many foreigners have we got now. Or put it another way, how many UK players are around.

According to wiki we have 16 non-English out of a listed 29 players but there's another 6 UK players in there from Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well and as you can't really call them foreigners we have only 10 foreigners out of 29 and even that includes people like the 19 year-old Tanska and the even younger Mikel Jenson.

But remembering Pardew's remarks last July, reported in the independent about the lack of Brits in Arsenal's Champions League team just how many will be in our first eleven? Weaver, McCarthy (maybe), Thatcher, Reid, Thomas, and Varney or Iwelumo - so 6 at most if you ignore Matty holland. And only 2 English.

But apart from worrying about Pardews consistency in his remarks do we really care whether we're cheering on Brits or foreign johnnies? Obviously it's the relationship, if that's the word, they have with Charlton that counts. Are they just here for the money or do they really care who they're playing for? Are they putting in the effort and can we fool ourselves that they care a fig about us?

To illustrate the results, contrast our affection for a foreigner like Kish compared with a Hackney boy like Lisbie. Although Kish managed to test our patience at the end, there's no contest, for me anyway, which one I preferred in my team. And on the other hand, Danish Dennis always showed himself willing to make an effort to be liked and was always one to applaud the fans after a game along with Holland but then his lack-lustre performances didn't help his cause and neither do his willingness to jump ship and look after himself once things looked bad.

So, all-in-all, the answer is we don't really care whether we're watching Svetoslav Moutaouakil, Jose Iwelumo or Souleymane Christensen as long as they put in a bit of effort, do the business, kiss the shirt every now and again with a bit of feeling and give us a wave. And in return we'll hope that they'll excuse our forgetting their name every once in a while.