No good having a decent bunch of individuals who can't play as a team. I can see a humiliating score line when we play Spain.
Well they've qualified; but that is to be expected from that group. Unless there are some major improvements before Euro2012, the Quarter Finals are the best I can see for this England team
Nothing world class about any of the set up, from top to bottom. I'll start taking an interest when Fabio has officially retired. (he retired when he took the England job.....shhhh don't tell the FA)
Ashley Cole is our only 'World Class' Player. Rooney comes very close, but I feel there are better players in that position.
England weren't bad at Euro 2004 or the 2006 WC with the golden generation at their peak. With a better manager than Sven, I reckon we could have done better. The danger of having a golden generation is that the next batch will have unrealistic expectations to be as good as the last group. This current group are poor, so the next lot won't have such very high standards to live up to and they're more likely to excel. If the likes of Sterling, McEachrane, JWP, Shaw et al can break through at their clubs, now is a pretty good time to do it from an international point of view. Spain are in the middle of a golden generation, Germany are just starting one, the time for France and Italy have been and gone. A good crop of young kids now could see us good in 2018/2020. South America is a perpetual talent factory, but the teams are very unpredictable. Patience is a virtue.
TBH the England setup has been a problem for 20 or more years. Its an old boys club where reputation gains you your place. Never more will a player doing brilliantly outside the top half of the prem be chosen. I'm personally thinking the last one was probably Steve Bull at Wolves. However I am not really of the opinion that we cannot compete. We need a manager (and a media that will have patience) that will give all a chance. JT no matter how people seem to think he is up there has never been good enough. He is a Tony Adams wannabe. A hoofer. Ferdinand was good for a long time but is now not so reliable injury wise. Says it all that for the past 15 years (and still now if he were in the team) Beckham is the only one who plays with fire and pride. I think Rooney is suffering myself. He is similar to Beckham in that he is England in his heart but it must be demoralising to play in the current setup. Such a let down for someone with such hopes like him. Some posters above have the right view though. You can warble on about players not being world class but what is world class? Good enough to play for a top 10 national side or outstanding? There are few outstanding players of the likes of Messi, Rooney, Ronaldo etc. Most of the top nations are world class players in that they are good enough to play for a top 10 side. So taking that statement on board, if ManYou are easily one of the top 5 sides in Europe (and therefore I would suggest the world) and Smalling, Young, Rooney, Jones, Carrick are good enough to be first choices in that team then they are world class players. They are first choices at one of the best teams in the world. That is a good spine of the national team playing with each other week in and week out. Add Cole to the LB Add Mica Richards at RB you have a very good defence from 3 of the world's current top 20 club sides (by my reckoning) Add a Parker, Walcott or a Wilshere in there and the midfield is complete. Add a striker from Carroll, Wellbeck, Crouch even and you now have a pretty decent first 11. What is the problem? The media and the public demanding workrate, demanding pretty football but not accepting that it can lead to bad results. Needs a motivator, needs a tactician, needs someone who is not afraid to go against public opinion sometimes, someone who is not afraid to take off a top player if they are underperforming etc. Is Redknapp the man to do that? No he will keep faith with the old guard bar a couple of outstanding youngsters. There are only 2 managers that have these qualities at the moment and they are top of the prem and championship. People warble on about golden generations. They are only golden generations if you keep persisting with the same players a la trying to put Gerrard and Lampard in the same team for 10 years. Good players do miss out on international caps because other managers make tough decisions. England managers don't. They bow to public and media demand for fear of making an out of the box decision (in English terms) and it failing. So who next for manager? I personally think we must go English. I personally think we should persist with English managers even if it means for the next 10 years we are the nearly men and never the QF/SF/Winners of tournaments. However that 'should' re-vitilise the passion, the pride, We are English and we want to play for England mentality. So lets go with Redknapp for now. Then we have 4 (+1 more of Capello) years to assess who will do the 'real' job of returning England to the World's top few teams after the passion is re-ignited. What am I saying? Yes it is the players that are the problem but not their quality. It is their attitude down to how they are playing, how they then feel towards the tactics etc.and only a very good manager is going to re-ignite the fire.
The problem with the Rugby is the manager. England are one of the best side in the world but some of the management decisions Wilkinson and Flood on? Wigglesworth is much quicker as scrum half but he persisited with the slow youngs who also makes bad decisions kicking possession away. And the whole of the world could see Stephens was not coping in the scrum from the start yet he stayed on for 60 minutes!!!
Agree with most of this. England managers rarely look outside the top few teams unless they are forced to, a name is glaringly obvious and picked up by the media or its a friendly against a poor side. I was quite impressed with Kevin Davies when he made his debut, but hew never got called back. It's how it is for players at unfashionable clubs - they get called up for the odd cameo in a friendly or easy qualifier, then it's back to the old guard for the tournaments. Are the managers afraid that a lower prem/Championship player could show up the big time charlies they've stuck with previously? It's surely pretty obvious to the manager, which players aren't performing?
IMO it is quite simply the ego of the manager. If they fail with the 'accepted' 11 best players, i.e. the 'old guard' then it is the team that are useless once again. If a manager picks someone not in that old guard and they fail the failure is then focused more on the manager for his choice. i.e. a team with Gerrard, Lampard and scholes in it, the focus is more on the team being bad because these are the 'best 3 midfielders' at the time. A manager that decides only to pick 1 as they are all attacking midfielders and then plays 3 different midfielders in the roles they play for clubs leaving say Gerrard and Lampard on the bench would then be lampooned by all if England lose. Lampooned for leaving 2 of the best players on the bench. Whether they can all play in the same team at the same time is irrelevant to most. A lot of England fans and virtually all the media cannot see the bigger picture. They bark on about top players should be able to play wherever they are put. Not the case though. All the past managers have tried players out of position but are not strong enough to then say 'this isn't going to work' and only include 1 player in his accustomed position. This was shown under Sven where we have all 3 of the above playing with Scholes on the left, Gerrard attacking mid and Lampard defensive mid (or vice versa) didn't work and he should have chosen just one as attacking midfielder (i.e. Scholes) and left the other 2 on the bench putting players that are accustomed to the defensive mid and left roles even if they are not 'as good' a player as they already CAN play in that position. Capello has continued this. Gerrard and Lampard when available. He is lampooned for putting Barry in there even though Barry is awesome in the defensive midfield role. He may not be as good a midfielder as Lampard, Gerrard and any number of other more eye catching players however in that role he is better than those 'better players' We see the same with Rooney. He gets played up front in a 4-5-1 all too often. He isn't a CF. He is more like Messi where he links play, brings in the midfield. He may play on his own at Man U but that is with an understanding that the wings will make a forward 3 when required Reminds me of certain England managers who plyed MLT as a rigid right winger. Then Hoddle who played him as a centre forward. Inevitable he was proclaimed a failure ('can't do it for England') but we never saw him get a chance at doing what he did for Saints in an England shirt because he was never played in his position (or non position if we say he was free to roam.) The only time he did do what he did for Saints (I think against Columbia but could be Romania) he cut in from the left, shot from distance, clipped the bar and was instantly ordered to stick to his position. It will take a manager who is not afraid to put his reputation and ego on the line to change that and I think we all know Harry has one of the largest egos and reputations going. Saying that it would most likely be his last job due to his age anyway so he may well take that risk but I doubt it. In essence though it is easy. Don't try to fit square shapes in the triangle and circle hole. A square will only fit in the square hole. Something my children learnt at a very early age If the square does fit though the triangle or circle hole it will not be as efficient as if it were put through the square hole and you may even have to 'trim' the square to get it to fit, thus losing some of it.
I've read through some of the thread, and the World Class issue has reared its ugly head again. FWIW, I agree, that many of the England team are not world class. Rooney, Cole, Terry and a couple of others would go into any national squad somewhere, that's why they are considered world class. Or at least that's how I consider them to be. But we don't honestly need 11 or 12 world class players to achieve anything at all at international level. We just need the right balance and attitude, back off with the expectation and raise the personal confidence levels in players when they pull on the England shirt. For those that wonder how that could possible happen, I would suggest they look to Germany as an example. Time and again, that country turns up with players who are not world class, but are fine players all the same. Maybe they'll have one or two, just like England, but no more. Yet they play as if they are all world class. They play out of their skins - not every time, but every time it matters. They play with an energy, speed, belief and tactical nous which leaves English players gasping. So what's the difference..? If we accept that the levels of fitness, technical skills, intelligence, etc... are probably of a similar level, then the basic difference can only be in the players heads. Here we are talking about expectation, confidence, belief,etc... It's the difference between turning up for an important exam or job interview, and being in the wrong state of mind, even though you're entirely suited or ready, and yet you fail because your state of mind had failed you. English players perform brilliantly [and maybe not so brilliantly, but we'll not go there], week in, week out. Yet when they pull on an England shirt, they become a team incapable of giving a mid table Championship side a good match [OK, I exaggerate, but you get the point]. We can all point out that they are not familiar with each other's play. Fine, so how do the German, Italian, Spanish players manage it so well then, when they play for their countries..? Right, that's that excuse out the window. It's in the players heads and it won't go away. On another level, it's the difference NIgel Adkins makes to Saints players, who have made the jump to the next level, as the saying goes. It's the difference Brian Clough made to his journey men teams of Derby County and Nott'm Forest, way back when. It's the difference Alf Ramsey made to his teams of Ipswich, and then England, even further back. I could suggest even Alex Ferguson, initially with Aberdeen, and then with ManU, who were absolutely spectacularly ordinary before he turned up. These managers took their teams and quietly, without outside overwhelming expectation, made a difference and engendered a winning mentality [we've heard that before..!]. It's what English players, as a team, playing for England, lack. Their expectation levels are so high, and their confidence and belief, as an England team, are so low, that they simply cannot perform to their huge potential. And they've been doing that for so long, notwithstanding the odd 5-1 freak result, that they've turned off a entire generation of supporters, and it's finally time to ditch them, because it's too late to change them. Retain a couple of the younger ones and move to the next generation [as they are starting to do] and start afresh, building up those ultra important positive traits in their minds. It'll take time; but it shouldn't take any longer than it took Germany to get to a world cup, with a bunch of youngsters and a few older players, and almost perform well enough to win the bloody competition again. Let's kiss the so-called golden generation goodbye, realise we've failed with them, and move on.
The premiership is bereft of something - akin to a soul. Englishness is not the most tangible identity to get behind...more so in these strange individualistic/celebrity times which the premiership footballer typifies; these factors seem to manifest as the malaise which is the national team's psyche. It would be great if (at least) half the squad played abroad; like most others, it makes you more rounded and gives you a sense where you come from. As that's never going to happen...I really do see Redknapp as a possible saviour. An extremely capable football and man manager - but as almost importantly evokes; newspaper wrapped fish and chips, dodgy motors/the heyday of the UK automotive industry, the local pub, the market, trips to the seaside...the stuff that wreaks of ENGLAND
would be a brave manager to pick a team of youngsters and stick with them as the fans and press would slate them on there first defeat or bad performance,how long would he stay manager ? the fans are as much to blame as they even boo the team at the slightest mistake ,,i was at the poland game in 73 when we drew and failed to qualify yet the whole crowd stayed behind and cheered the team and was chanting ramsey,s name ,,society has lot to answer for todays attitude
Friendlies and easy qualifiers are the perfect opportunity to trial youngsters and fringe players that may be able to add value to the squad. The idea is to reward the ones that show promise with more caps. It clearly doesn't happen enough. No club manager in his right mind would stick with a set of players that clearly didn't work as a team until they were 30. Different situation at club level I know, but any manager will tell you that a motivated and well balanced team is better than 11 technically superior but disorderly individuals It's why so many upsets happen in cups when the favourite believes the game is already won. Being English, we're not used to winning much, but we need to go out with more style. The current crop won't win anything, but it might be able to make us proud if a manager has the balls to think outside the box. .
Agreed. Where were Welbeck and Sturridge? They have been class so fair this season, and yet Capello picked bent who has scored one and got no assists.....
Davis Richardson Martin Seaborne Harding/Dickson Holmes Hammond Cork Lallana Lambert Barnard I'd put money on that team beating the current England team
