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Foreigners own half of Premiership

LONDON - Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Fulham, West Ham United, Manchester City, Portsmouth, Sunderland and about a quarter of Arsenal: heading into the new season almost half the Premier League teams are in foreign hands.

LONDON - Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Fulham, West Ham United, Manchester City, Portsmouth, Sunderland and about a quarter of Arsenal: heading into the new season almost half the Premier League teams are in foreign hands.

Should English football be worried? Has it, as Tom Bower, the author of Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football, wrote, "sold the crown jewels"?

Is wealth generated by UK clubs being sucked away from England? The answer is surprisingly simple: no, it isn't, for the very simple reason that English football clubs tend not to make a profit.

Of the sides in last season's Premier League, only Arsenal, Blackburn Rovers, Everton, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Bromwich Albion were profitable. Not a single one was not in debt.

The Premier League has taken foreigners' cash in investments that, in most cases, will never pay off.

But that aside, are foreign owners a bad thing? When only 37percent of players in the Premier League are qualified to play for England, and three of the Big Four, as well as the England national team, are managed by foreigners, why should foreigners not get involved in other areas of the game? - Sapa-DPA

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