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Having said that, the Blue Bell's management team has just changed from Ron and Emma (born in Northallerton) to Carly and Hansie (born Pietermaritzburg) and there was nothing we locals, men who had inhaled the smog of a billion bad Teesside chimneys since we were so high, could do about it.

Thankfully, KP is from Pietermaritzburg so they're as good as English any road. And the South Africans know enough about serving and sinking a pint or nine to make the whole experience surprisingly pleasant.

But then that's the problem with footie fans too, isn't it? How many times have you heard this...?

"We don't want them Yanks at our club! What the hell do they know about football!? We're just being used as some sort of debt-holding cesspit while they rip us off! Yanks Go Ho.... wait a minute, go on Cristiano/Fernando* my son, go on! Yes! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!! We're top of the league! La-la-la La-la-L'America!!!" (*delete as applicable)

Harry Redknapp said last week that fans don't care who owns the club and we wouldn't give a toss as long as we bag them three points of a Saturday (or increasingly, Sunday).

Well, 'Arry, you don't think much of us do you, son? Personally I'd be insulted if it wasn't for the fact that is rumoured to be throwing some cash at the Boro in the next three months - and replacing Southgate with Tony Mowbray - and expanding the Riverside Stadium into a giant shopping mall with a footie pitch at one end of it. (We've always had a special relationship with the North Koreans up here.)

I made this jest in the Bell last night and at least two numbskulls got very over-excited about it, although Tony Thompson was a bit worried on moral grounds - not 'cos of human rights abuses but because "they eat dogs". Frankly it'd be an improvement on them Biltong snacks that Carly and Hansie are chucking at us from behind the bar. But I digress.

Platini's point is that foreign owners bring wads of cash to buy foreign players and before you know it the club's lost its identity.

Commentators always tout Carra and Stevie and JT and Frank and Red Nev and Scholesy as examples of true club men from the old school. And you'll always get that stat trotted out about all being born within a docker's cuss of Celtic Park.

Of course Platini's right - and yet you ask a Gooner whether he thinks Arsenal have an identity problem. They don't. They used to scrape 1-0's off the back of a defence built from English oaks and now they are Arsene's Arsenal - Arsene-All. Everything the team does has Arsene written all over it. Utterly identifiable, not very Norf Lahndon, but pretty and damn successful.

Perhaps there's a case for every club picking a manager on the basis that his name is virtually already in the club's title. In the next few years expect to see the following gaffers: Jack Charlton at the Addicks, Jim Leighton at Orient, Mr Eriksson at Sheffield Svensday and Vidal Sassoon at Barnet.

But clubs don't lose their identity cos of an influx of money - they lose it if the turnover of managers is too quick. Managers who can build a team in their own image can create the identity of a club for years to come - Keegan's Newcastle (free-flowing, romantic, self-deluded), Allardyce's Bolton (big, dirty) Greenwood's West Ham (neat, attractive), Nicholson's Spurs.

A strong man Like Wenger or Scolari can change the wholesale character of a club, but they need time and probably the worst thing that the money men have brought with them is a complete lack of patience.

I do agree with Michel about this story of Chelsea bagging an 11-year-old from Marseille. That's bloody ridiculous. The lad should be left to get on with his life in his home town. They can keep tabs on him without flying him over and sticking him in a waterfront apartment or wherever. Eleven years of age!

Sooner or later I think these G14 clubs will find out where on the chromosome you can find the footy gene and they'll be buying holding midfielders who are not yet out of the womb.

Come to think of it, if Sepp Blatter has his way there'll be a limit on foreign-born players in the Premier League so the well-rich clubs'll be flying in busloads of pregnant women in order to have little Thierry or Andriy or Gianfranco born within the whiff of battered cod.

What I don't get, employment laws and whatnot notwithstanding, is how Platini and Blatter can stand around whining about the way footie's going in England and then not have the wherewithal to actually do something about it. If they can't start summat, who can?

If regulations don't tighten now then the Premier League is going to be a billionaires' bagatelle and so far, no one from Roman to is getting any real flak off the fans. In fact, in the Manchester City FC shop there's never been such a run on tea-towels.