By Brian Sears

8 October 2010

The international break highlights the multinational nature of the Premier League, with players from every continent bar Antarctica now playing in England’s elite division. There are hundreds of them, most of them full internationals. (Scroll down for table).

Sportingintelligence research of league games played so far in the 2010-11 season shows that 416 different players have been involved in league action so far, with 285 of them, or 68.5 per cent, being full internationals.

A separate piece today describes the nation by nation breakdown.

Of the 417 players, 342 have started games and a further 74 have been used only as substitutes. Of the “starters”,  252 of them (73.7 per cent) are full internationals, and of the substitutes, 33 of them (44 per cent) are internationals.

Manchester City have the highest proportion of international players when considering the proportion used in league games so far this season: 95 per cent of City’s players in league games, or 19 of 20 players used, including seven players capped by England, have been full internationals.

Dedryck Boyata, the Belgian under-21 player of Congolese descent, is the only man who’s appeared in a league game for City this season who hasn’t been capped at senior level by his country. Of City’s 18 different starters, 17 have been full internationals, Boyata the exception. Both “sub only” players have been internationals. (City’s rich squad has come at a price, inevitably, more here).

Boyata made his only start in the win over Chelsea’s whose claim to fame in our research is that they are the Premier League club this season to start every one of their league matches with a full team of internationals. Fourteen different players have started for Chelsea, all of them internationals. See the table below for more details on each club’s international players this season.

Other notable statistical nuggets from our research to warm the soul on chilly Autumnal day include:

• Tottenham have used most players overall, 25 of them (21 internationals), with Birmingham, Everton and Bolton using joint least, 18
• Tottenham have used the most different starters, 21, the same as West Ham, while Chelsea, Bolton and Newcastle have used joint least, 14
• After Man City’s proportionally highest number of internationals (95 per cent), come Fulham (90.5 per cent), Liverpool (90 per cent), Chelsea (85 per cent) and Blackburn (84.2 per cent)
• Tottenham have used the most absolute number of internationals as starters (19) and Blackpool the least (five)
• Everton have used nobody as a sub who hasn’t started at least one other game as well, while West Brom and Blackpool have each used six players solely as subs but  not yet starters
• Man City have used the joint most England internationals (7), with Tottenham and Aston Villa. Only three clubs have not used a single full England international: Stoke, Wolves and Blackpool

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With international games this evening and next week, the wheel will turn again and the numbers will change after the next round of Premier League games. [12 Oct update: and a few numbers have been tweaked in recent days]

For now though this is a snapshot of the Premier League, the global game.

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