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Allardyce backs work permit rules

West Ham manager Sam Allardyce yesterday rejected suggestions made by Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger that English football’s work permit rules should be scrapped.

Wenger pointed to the money going out of the country to overseas clubs to sign players such as Angel di Maria, claiming he had wanted to sign the Argentina winger as a 17-year-old.

Rather bizarrely, he claimed that making it easier for clubs to sign foreign youngsters would help develop English players.

The Frenchman said on Thursday: “If you want to be the best league in the world then you have to accept that you have to produce the best players in the world, so the question is how can you produce the best players?

“If you put a young player with top players, he has more chance to develop. If you put him with average players he has more chance to remain average.”

But Allardyce was quick to reject that view.

“There’s already a massive influx of foreign youth coming to academies and us losing the opportunities for young British players to take up those places,” he said.

Abolishing the work permit rule “is a real no-no. I’m sure Arsene, if he was working in France, would have a similar opinion to me.

“Protect your own. We very rarely do it in this country and haven’t done it up until now.

“We’ve got to do it somewhere along the line and get more British players through.”

The rules state a player must have featured in 75 per cent of his country’s international matches over the last two years — with his country in the top 70 of Fifa’s rankings — to qualify for a “governing body endorsement.”

But exceptions can be granted for players “able to contribute significantly to the development of the game at the top level in England.”

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