Quality post. I said before that the bulk of the players were in their prime 6 years ago and stuffed it. Roy had very little pressure due to the timing of his appointment and could have thrown a lot of young players into the tournament as a blooding exercise to focus on forming a team for the next 10 years.
There was not a lot of of difference tonight between the two sides in terms of quality..... with the exception of Pirlo. I knew that, you knew that...so why didn't the rest of the Team England camp know that? It makes my bloody blood boil. We let them have it far too comfortable. We shoukld of put Gerrard on him, if he was going to get knackered, it might of as well of been nullifying Pirlo.
This formation would have stopped us being out numbered in midfield last night: ------------------------Hart--------------------- Johnson-----------Terry------Lescott-------Cole -----------------Jones------Parker-------------- Walcott---------------Gerrard---------------Ox --------------------Rooney-------------------- Whilst I agree that we are not as technically good, I don't agree that our players can't control the ball and pass it! They do it for their clubs week in and week out. There is a fear of failure with England and a fear of playing with fluidity. We now need to clear out the old guard completely and look to the future........get rid of Terry, Cole, Barry, Parker, Gerrard, Young, Milner, Lampard and get youth in, playing with freedom. However, Roy's team for the WC qualifiers will be virtually what we saw last night!!
John Giles regularly makes the point that our players when playing for their Clubs look better than they actually are because they're surrounded by foreigners! I think hes spot on. They do their huff and puff but look good as part of a balanced unit. But put them all together in a National side and their short-comings are found out big time. You're right though Col, there still is an element of fear in the England set up that hinders free-flowing play. Unfortunately though, they'd still be miles behind in terms of skill in any event.
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