Saints have been bucking the Premier League trend by giving English players a chance – and club legend Lawrie McMenemy wants to see more clubs follow suit.

McMenemy, below, had a spell in charge of the England under-21 side that included winning a rare piece of international silverware for the country at the Toulon tournament in 1993.

He has long since warned that the mass of foreign imports into the top flight would eventually have a big impact on the national side.

He is now being proven correct as the full side struggle to qualify for the World Cup while the under-21s totally flopped at the European Championships, failing to even get a single point from their three group games.

Saints have at least done their part to boost the country, with 52 per cent of the players they used in the top flight last season being English – better than any other Premier League club.

But that is very much against the general trend with more than a third of clubs failing to even field 30 per cent of English players.

The worst offenders were relegated Wigan, who played just three English players all season – and between them they only made 23 Premier League starts.

McMenemy believes it is quite obvious where the problems lay.

Writing exclusively in his Daily Echo column today, he said: “Look no further than the fact that more and more foreign players are taking up the places in the Premier League.

“It’s not just with the top half dozen clubs, all down the league with a mixture of foreign ownership, foreign managers and quite frankly the fact sometimes a cheaper deal can be done is ensuring that the Premier League has got to the stage where the England manager has little over 30 per cent of the players regularly taking part in the top division at his disposal.

“He is finding as I did so many years ago when they (some players) are taken away from being surrounded with in some cases exceptionally high quality foreign players they are not as good when put into the England dressing room.”

The stats don’t look overly favourable either when compared with other major leagues.

The total percentage of English players used in the Premier League last season was 37 per cent. In La Liga there were 61 per cent Spanish players, in Serie A 48 per cent Italian players and in the Bundesliga 47 per cent German players.

Many of the current England under-21 crop have come in for criticism over their attitude during the tournament, including from manager Stuart Pearce, and McMenemy concedes things are very different to the days when a young Steve McManman turned up to play for him with his boots in a paper bag.

“Whilst the players in those days were well paid compared to the man in the street a major difference could well be that the under-21 squad even now is made up more of young millionaires than anything else,” he wrote.

“I don’t think McManaman was too well off in those days judging by the paper bag and that in a nutshell could be the difference between then and now.

“That means that the management of these young, rich players has got to be more old fashioned than ever, whereby they have to be informed how lucky they are, how short a life football is, how important it is to represent their country and that when they look back in years to come how lucky they should feel.”

“It still doesn’t get away from the fact that England might expect but can’t be guaranteed to even qualify these days simply because the exceptional amounts of money pouring in has opened gates to foreign players and then slightly closed them on the English, which is having a massive impact on the national team.”