After an interesting debut into the England Premiership Series A Soccer, Obafemi Martins has been helping Birmingham to improve their standings in the leagues.  He has been included in the full squad for the first time. This was after a visa was secured from the Home Office. Alex McLeish is making a decision whether Martins will be on the substitute bench or whether he will be a fulltime player. There are some problems with the placement because Martins has not been able to play competitively for two months.
A combination of injury and immigration issues
After the challenges of joining the team, McLeish has decided that Martins will join the full team. This is after Scott Dann and James McFadden were put out by injury. With the luxury of a full squad, the sky is the limit in terms of what can be achieved within the season. Of course there is the longstanding issue of Ben Foster who has been taken away from play due to a thumb injury. He was also not able to play for England in their friendly against Denmark. The problem for some of these clubs is the fact that they spend fortunes on players only to discover that they are too injured to play the game. That represents a loss that will eat into the team budget. It is also not fair to other players that are seated on the substitute bench. The Home Office can be obnoxious in its attempt to enforce colonial style immigration rules against players who are never going to endanger any real competition in the home country.
In case one can only hope that Martins will be well enough to join the full spectrum of activities on the England Premiership Series A Soccer. It is a longstanding issue that has to be handled within the setting according to the rules of the game. The idea of developing home grown English players has been popular in the past but it dangerously borders on outright xenophobia and the sports authorities are afraid of attracting the wrath of the PC police. It might also not make any sense from the perspective of looking for the best talent. If the best player you have is from Nigeria, it would be extremely foolish to leave them aside just because they are not English. The recruitment in these sports is in a bit of a mess and it will take years to correct all the problems.