The sad passing of former Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood at the age of 82 serves as yet another reminder of how much the face of English football has changed over recent decades.
Take the Arsenal line-up from his first match as the club's chairman back in August 1982, which consisted of nine Englishmen, a Scot and an Irishman.
Such a team is virtually unthinkable nowadays in the cosmopolitan Premier League, where it's assumed that the finest talents from scores of countries around the world will be seen.
Given that Hill-Wood's time as chairman saw Arsenal win five league championships, five FA Cups, two League Cups and the European Cup Winners' Cup, that afternoon back in 1982 wasn't the most auspicious start as they lost 2-1 at Stoke.
Mind you, given how even the best of Arsene Wenger's teams struggled whenever they visited the Potteries, perhaps this comes as little surprise.
The Gunners had finished fifth in the old First Division in 1981-82, which proved to be the final campaign under the chairmanship of Denis Hill-Wood, Peter's father, who died in May 1982.
With a new chairman at the helm, Arsenal visited the Victoria Ground as favourites given Stoke's brush with relegation the following season. Indeed, many pundits had written them off as certainties for the drop.
Arsenal fielded Scotland international George Wood between the posts and Ireland's finest David O'Leary, already something of a club stalwart, at centre-half.
The remainder of the playing squad - Kenny Sansom, Chris Whyte, John Hollins, Graham Rix, Stewart Robson, Brian Talbot, Lee Chapman, Tony Woodcock, Alan Sunderland and Paul Davis - were English.
Completing the Home Nations feel was the Gunners' manager, Northern Irishman Terry Neill who remarkably young for a top level manager at just 40.
Chapman was making his Arsenal debut after a £500,000 switch from Stoke over the summer and, thanks to some ill-judged comments about his former club, was handed a hostile reception by the crowd of 15,504.
Against all expectations, Stoke took a fifth-minute lead with a corner routine straight off the pre-season training ground.
Mickey Thomas swung it in, Brendan O'Callaghan flicked it on at the near post and George Berry scored at the back post.
Mark Chamberlain, a new signing at Stoke, was in excellent form, turning Sansom, who had played for England at that summer's World Cup in Spain, inside out all game.
And early in the second-half, Chamberlain left Sansom for dead before crossing for O'Callaghan to double the lead.
Though Sunderland did score a late response for Arsenal it couldn't prevent them sliding to an opening day defeat.
And though Arsenal would obviously go on to enjoy considerable success during Hill-Wood's time at the helm, it wasn't immediately obvious by the way they lost three of their opening four games.
An 8-4 aggregate defeat to Spartak Moscow also saw Arsenal out of the UEFA Cup at the first hurdle and in the end, they finished the season a disappointing 10th.