Top 10 foreign players in Premier League History

Thanks for that. A lot of misconceptions got cleared!

Not sure how a manager who worked and won titles in Porto, Holland and Spain can be accused of holding a player's nationality against them (the bit about Lua Lua and Solano in particular). Otherwise, some interesting observations

Bash did say ,

I genuinely think that - not out of any sort of xenophobia, but because he had a core of players, was close to some of them, and thus an ideal formed - he became concerned with fielding a team of primarily English players, who would stand precisely as 'his'.

I could understand why he'd favor young homegrown talent (even though they were bought from 'lower' clubs / 'lower' leagues, they'd be seen like homegrown as he bought them young & developed them).

Not everyone is a Puro to bluntly disregard Robson for xenophobia.

It's a bit like Ferguson standing by Wes Brown, O'Shea, Djemba-djemba, Kleberson, Fortune (before being forced to buy proper replacements) or Wenger trying to stick by Almunia, Bendtner, Denilson & Eboue. Every manager builds a special affinity towards players they brought to the club.

It'd not surprise me if Puro had a big grudge against Robson for Solano being sold.

"In a similar vein, Robson stopped using LuaLua. This was based, I felt, on LuaLua deciding to play international football for the Congo rather than for England (one of Robson's problems with Solano centred round him playing for Peru, which was grossly unfair of Robson and irrelevant given how little the issue actually affected us)"

Lua Lua was "homegrown". I'd be surprised if Robson stopped using him because he chose to play for Congo over England. But then I don't know the ins and outs to be honest

Obviously the above is my take, and involves a degree of interpretation; though I don't think that I'm simply extrapolating motives and some sort of coherency out of bare facts, still my assessment of the period is probably harsher on Robson than many other assessments would be - which shouldn't serve to cloud the way in which many fans were upset not only with the team, but with Robson at the end of the 2003/04 season, and considered a change of manager necessary. I think many fans would shift the perspective somewhat and argue that Robson was too loyal and too lenient to a group of players - Bellamy, Dyer, Jenas, Bramble - who didn't do him justice on or off the pitch, and that the players were at fault more than him. Some might also suggest there was a degree of logic at least to the sale of Solano, for instance, who was around his thirtieth birthday at that time; and might argue that LuaLua and Viana had their limitations in terms of consistency and physical strength respectively, and so ultimately weren't long-term options for us.

I think Robson was as arrogant as many top managers, and a mixture of arrogance and pride and affection did mean that he began to follow a certain course when it came to the players at the club. He saw that he had built an excellent, effective team featuring a core of young players from England and the United Kingdom who were in turn building their careers under him, and he thought it would be special if he could develop an energetic young team entirely in that image. That was the type of thing he'd achieved at Ipswich; and I know this is moving towards the realm of psychoanalysis, but after coming relatively close to success in the England job in 1990, managing abroad, then returning to England and having to turn down the offer to become part-time England manager after Keegan's resignation in 2000 (we wouldn't let him take the job), I think he fancied doing the same type of thing again.

Explicitly, Robson argued against Solano and LuaLua's international commitments - he didn't like the scheduling of Peru and Congo's matches and didn't appreciate the travel involved. He tried to get Solano to retire from international football; which was entirely unfair and inappropriate, given Solano's importance to us on the pitch, his professionalism, the minimal effect his international commitments actually had, and Robson's own passion for and commitment to the England team. I think Robson was fairly quick to take offence. Again, I don't think xenophobia fundamentally motivated his decisions, or that he was xenophobic in any way whatsoever, but I think he developed a fixed idea of what he wanted his Newcastle to become and it ended up serving nobody well.

The bare facts are that in little over a year we replaced Solano with Bowyer down our right, and then also signed Ambrose and Milner and started playing one of the two ahead of Robert down our left; and Viana and LuaLua saw their playing time severely curtailed in spite of injuries to other players. The sale of Dabizas and the replacement of Speed with Butt for me tie into the picture, in different ways. Jenas's loss of form is more subjective, but I think every Newcastle fan at the time felt it had occurred and yet Jenas continued to play. Towards the close of the 2003/04 season moving into the start of the next, we ended with some tired players who played regardless and I think developed some bad habits and attitudes on and off the pitch because their places were so assured; and with Robert increasingly frustrated; and with squad players who were very talented but essentially useless because they had been marginalised and weren't pleased and couldn't get up to speed in the occasional minutes they were afforded. Whatever the reasons, the results of the decisions Robson made in his last year and a half as our manager were not good and I don't think many of the decisions were sensible in purely footballing terms.

Souness is a rank idiot, and when he came to the club he worked in all directions to dismantle the vestiges of quality in the side. Partly owing to Robson's reputation for affording the players too much ground, partly owing to his own bloody-mindedness, he took a hard-line approach to the squad which saw Bellamy and Robert cast from it. I think Jenas by this point was really low in terms of confidence and ready for a move. With Dyer injured more and more frequently, this left us with a defence average at best but inclined towards calamitous error; with average wide-midfielders and Nicky Butt in the centre of the pitch; and with Shearer at last really showing his age up front.