Which players will be managers in ten years?

It is a sign of growing old when you can remember clearly when the current crop of managers were players. You are then able to bore your children rigid with stories of how good they were. Well you owe it to the next generation to maintain the conversations, jokes and, eventually, dress sense of your old dad - it eases their flight from the nest. Currently there are many good players that have turned managers within the timeframe of the recent explosion of the interweb, but who will be in the next batch?

Tony Adams at Portsmouth, Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough, Mark Hughes at Man City, Paul Ince at Blackburn, Gianfranco ZOla at West Ham, Steve Bruce at Wigan and Roy Keane at Sunderland were good players in those dim and distant dog days of 20th century. Those seven would form the backbone of a formidable team in the 1990s - if a little bottom heavy on centre-halves.

Interestingly five of them were traditional captains, the kind of players that leave nothing on the pitch at the end of the game. The other two, Zola and Hughes, captained on the odd occasion that they were the senior player - but were more notable as uncomplaining forwards who were kicked black and blue and kept playing as long as humanly possible.

Three or four years ago there was plenty of speculation that the days of the British manager were over; before the end of the decade every club would have a foreign owner and a foreign manager (or coach with the dread implication of a director of football). But the complete reversal of that trend means that there are now only four foreign Premier League managers - with a sizable chunk of the bosses drawn from the better players of the 1990s.

So assuming that this home-grown (or at least English based) trend continues there are certain pointers to assessing who will be in the next batch. If you are looking for which current players who will step into management then I guess the traits you ar looking for are captains, hard workers - flair being optional, players who love the game too much to leave it (and therefore play into their late 30s injury permitting) and if at all possible possessing a charismatic aura to ease recruitment and, obviously, employment. Which that in mind the following current top flight players are managerial possibles:

Arsenal: There aren't many obvious captains, uncomplaining forwards or veterans to choose from

Aston Villa: Gareth Barry, John Carew

Blackburn: Tugay, Robbie Fowler

Bolton: Kevin Davies

Chelsea: John Terry, Frank Lampard.

Everton: Phil Neville

Fulham: Jimmy Bullard

Hull City: George Boeteng, Dean Windass, Nicky Barmby

Liverpool: Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher

Man City: Didi Hamann.

Man Utd: Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand (there may be more given the astonishing number of Ferguson's players that make the step up).

Middlesbrough: A young squad without an obvious candidate to replace Southgate

Newcastle: Shay Given, Mark Viduka

Portsmouth: David James, Sol Campbell

Stoke: Dominic Matteo is a possibility

Sunderland: Dwight Yorke

Tottenham: No-one obvious springs to mind, possibly Ledley King

West Brom: Goalkeepers are rarely trusted as manager, but apart from Dean Kiely I'm stumped

West Ham: At a stretch Lucas Neill

Wigan: Emile Heskey

I guess you could add Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole to this list. Although the vast sums of money thrown at footballers today means that few of them need to earn money to stay solvent, everyone needs to stay busy and there are only so many paid jobs for pundits. So I would be surprised if five or six from this list of twenty-odd aren't managing in the top flight in the next decade - and that the majority of these players move into coaching or management.

* Have we missed anyone? Who do you think will make the step up from player to manager?