The English Football Association's chairman Geoff Thompson was heavily criticised last night after it emerged that his was the only dissenting voice when UEFA introduced proposals for a minimum number of home-grown players at clubs across Europe.

On the day after Arsenal fielded a squad devoid of British players, the Professional Footballers' Association chairman Gordon Taylor expressed outrage that Thompson had dissented to an otherwise overwhelming consensus for the quotas at a UEFA executive committee meeting this month.

Thompson was responding to a request from the Premier League to voice its disquiet at the introduction in UEFA competitions of a system ensuring at least two players from each squad have been developed by that club and a minimum of two more have emerged from another English academy. These numbers are set to be doubled by the 2008-09 season.

Despite support for the proposals from the players' union and the Football League board - although all but two Premiership clubs were against - Thompson took the Premier League objections to UEFA.

"I find it astonishing that the FA's job is to look after the interests of English football but it responds to the desires of the Premier League," said Taylor. "It is a dereliction of duty. [ In England] we have the most professional clubs, the highest attendances and the most TV money, but we haven't won a major international trophy for 40 years. How many other Steven Gerrards and Wayne Rooneys are there out there waiting for their opportunity?

"This is not a criticism of managers like Arsene Wenger but there are directors who are not speaking in the interests of the England team. I hope [ the FA chief executive] Brian Barwick addresses this. But the fact is the FA's [ board] is strongly populated by people from the Premier League."

The FA insists it has yet to formulate an official position on the issue, which Taylor considers all the more alarming, since it failed to canvass other bodies' opinions before the UEFA executive committee meeting on February 3rd, despite being the representative of the English game at large.

Thompson's position as FA chairman came under considerable threat from powerful Premier League opponents following the resignation of Barwick's predecessor Mark Palios.

The staunchest critic of the UEFA proposals - which Taylor considers not to be far reaching enough - has been David Dein, Arsenal's vice-chairman, who is also a senior politician within the FA.

"Here is a man, a prominent member of the FA's international committee, openly lobbying against UEFA's quota proposals," said Taylor. "I find that absolutely astounding. I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and he said that Arsenal can't make those criteria as it stands. I said, 'Don't you feel embarrassed by that as an international board member'?"

Dein's opposition has been thrown into sharp relief by Arsenal's employment of a non-British 16-man squad against Crystal Palace on Monday, setting a precedent for English football that was lambasted by the former England international and Arsenal academy graduate Paul Merson.

"Arsenal's non-British 16 was terrifying," said Merson. "We are cutting our own throats by opening up the Premiership to so many foreign players who then use the experience to their nation's advantage. If the influx continues to run at the alarming rate exposed by Arsenal's squad, we can forget about ever winning anything again at international level."

Though the new quota applies only to European club competitions, UEFA wants to see it applied across Europe's national leagues. But the Premier League has no intention of adopting the proposals.

"Premier League clubs have already invested millions of pounds in developing youth academies, which, together with improving coaching levels, is perhaps a more productive way of guaranteeing even more young English talent emerges to enable our national team to succeed in international competition," said a Premier League spokesman.