Andrew Murray-Watson: Buy Arsenal if you like. Just don't call it a soccer club

So the wholesale takeover of English football clubs by Americans continues apace. Malcolm Glazer started the trend by snapping up Manchester Utd for a mere £800m, and Randy Lerner at Aston Villa and George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Liverpool have followed in his footsteps. Now Arsenal and Southampton are set to go the same way.

The buyers of all these teams have one thing in common: they all already own sports teams in the US and all, presumably, see English football clubs as similarly valuable assets.

Opposition to the idea of the star-spangled banner hanging over some of the most famous grounds in the country is persistent. Voices raised in protest include some football team owners, MPs and an assortment of supporters' clubs.

But should we be worried if our top football teams are owned by overseas investors?

It is interesting to note that opposition seems to be strongest when the buyer is American. I can only assume that this is something to do with the general anti-American sentiment in this country. But George Bush's "assertive" foreign policy can't be the only reason. Perhaps if these US billionaires would stop using words like "franchises" to describe clubs that have more than 100 years of history behind them, it might improve matters. Memo to American sports tycoons: a franchise is a branch of McDonald's, not an FA Cup winning team with an untold multitude of besotted fans.

And learn the lingo. Over here it's a goal line not an end zone, and when the players come on to the pitch to start a match, it's called the first half, not the first quarter. And we have full-backs, not running backs. Try to get a basic grasp of the offside rule as well. I know that most Premiership referees struggle half the time, but give it a go.

But are overseas owners actually bad for clubs? I doubt it. Man Utd should win the Premier League this year, and they have not disintegrated, as many predicted when Mr Glazer bought the team. Chelsea has obviously benefited from Roman Abramovich's millions, while Aston Villa are ... well, still sort of average.

American billionaires are not going to stop buying overpriced players. The value of their asset depends on success on the pitch - it's that simple.

Of course, there are concerns that dispassionate Americans with no real sense of a club's history will neglect its vital role in its local community. But those worries seem misplaced. Cold, hard, commercial logic - like it or not - dictates that a team will prosper in the long term only by nurturing its local support.

The argument that these US sports tycoons bring a wealth ofcommercial know-how to English football is still unproven. We are not bad at running football clubs ourselves, don't you know.

Sport is big business these days, but that does not mean that appealing to a global audience has to come at the expense of the life-long fan round the corner. New club owners should know that; if they don't, they will soon learn.

There will be fans who find themselves unable to afford to go and watch their beloved team. But foreign ownership does not make ticket price hikes any more or less likely. Clubs will always adjust ticket prices to balance supply and demand - they are not charities, after all (although I concede that anyone who has seen West Ham's back four in action this season may beg to differ). Those that don't behave in a commercial manner usually fail to win any competitions. Either that or they go bankrupt.

The UK has prospered from inward investment from overseas. I see no reason why football should be any different.