No Spurs on the England squad in the last world cup, when we lost to Italy. Four Spurs on the field for the tying goal against Italy yesterday, three Academy products. Four from Spurs Academy have also been very influential in the U-21 team's success. Three academy players having breakthrough years in Spurs first team. Everyone connected with the Academy deserves credit.
It is genuinely hard to understand. I'm just a fan, and a newish one at that, and it was obvious to me it was a terrible set up. I called it funky and talked about managers experimenting too much. So it remains a mystery why a veteran manager with a decent record would try it. Surely in the future we should play Walcott on the wing, if at all, and have Carrick, Huddlestone or some Tom Carroll type who can get the ball forward in the team.
As always ****ing happens, one of our players got injured on England duty: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32148403
I never had a problem with Redknapp's football just his television career conducted from his Range Rover.
I know that Spurf, I don't view you as anti Redknapp and I'm very aware you enjoyed his football and appreciated the experience he offered to the club and the plus points of his management but my comment was just to highlight certain players need a certain style of management to play their best football and in Hudds case, Redknapp would have picked him for the England squad. When Hudd was in fine form for Hull, he was ignored, when his style of play is perfect for the international game while players where picked who where clearly out of their depth and thats just one of the reasons why I view Hodgson as being the wrong manager.
I agree about Huddlestone. Carrick and Huddlestone stand out as the two players who can fill the playmaking role for England. I think Mason can and hope Carroll can as well. I liked Redknapp's football and didn't mind the Range Rover punditry. It was his taste in jobs I had trouble with. Speaking of which, he is available...
Redknapp: Football - great Transfer deadline day range rovering - tacky but funny His big gob - bearable Team line-ups like the one vs Stevanage - baffling Taking his eye off the prize - unforgivable
International Football is quite tricky I think. England are about as good as Spurs currently so top six standard in the PL. Most of the teams we play in qualifying are more like championship standard and more than half the teams in the European and World Cup Finals will be mid-premier league standard at best. But to win one of these events you have to beat a couple of teams as good as Real Madrid or Bayern Munich. Players and systems that look good against Sunderland don't work against Real Madrid. I've always advocated a high risk approach: pick young mercurial players with high skill levels that might just beat the best on a good day and stick with them, risking that they might not apply themselves well enough to beat the average sides in qualifying. This approach should also be the right one for clubs like us as well which is why I've been pleasantly surprised by Pochetino's way of managing. Of course in practice the FA sacks the manager if he doesn't qualify so he is incentivised to do exactly the wrong thing: pick a reliable boring team who will qualify with ease and get found out the moment they come up against real quality.
It's all opinion, mate, and why we're all here discussing football. If Rooney's influential it's not showing on the pitch. I'd have Rooney at Spurs in a flash if the money was right, of course, but I wouldn't see him as the voice to up our performances. The logic in saying he needs to play could be applied to Kaboul too but I don't see many calling for him to be put back in our starting 11. We also have Hart, Cahill, Jagielka and Henderson who are all influential and vocal about the team. There's also players like Noble and Shawcross who are fine leaders and don't get a look in for England. I just think we're making the same problems for ourselves again. Gerrard went to the World Cup as our holding midfielder as it was the easiest way to get him in the team. He let everyone down and was the weakest link in a weak side. I'm not saying Rooney shouldn't start, I'm just saying he shouldn't be an automatic starter. If there are two strikers in excellent form, lets say Kane repeats this season in the next and Sturridge repeats his previous season's form, then try and get them working together for England. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work but whilst you're trying it out don't push Rooney out wide or into midfield for the sake of playing him, leave him out. I don't see the problem with having no designated captain until we enter the finals of a competition, rotate it around beforehand and that way we go in to a summer tournament knowing we have a number of players who can lead. It's the same with injured players, how many times have we gone into tournaments with players that aren't fully fit and how many times has it worked out fine? Never yet we still do it because we believe we have to rely on them.
You can't please everyone, whoever is manager. There is a thread on this site at present about the most overrated managers. SAF is nominated because he bought Djemba Djemba and Kleberson, had money to spend most of the time when he needed it and because Utd didn't win the title every season (sometimes when well placed to do so) and he only won 2 CLs!! No pleasing some people.
Some fans on here forget our team is playing a match so you can't take them serious on views regarding managers or other fans forget how highly they rated a manager when he was here. But as for SAF, he rubbed fans up the wrong way as he was successful, arrogant, Scottish and liked to put people in their place so he has never been the most popular manager with the general fan. The only part of his career he will be disappointed with is failing to win more European titles but to be fair you only need to look how our current top teams find success in Europe hard to come by and since fergie retired English football has struggled in Europe and the league is worse for him not being at Utd.
I agree. The funny thing is, Rooney is the kind of player who should help England beat the Sunderlands. He fits the profile of flat track bully perfectly. He will help a superior team get more of the points against an inferior team effectively, but against the best opposition, his take charge attitude combined with skills that are good but not brilliant are counterproductive, more or less as Gerrard’s were (at his best). The best teams are too finely balanced for a take charge player to help, unless he has the skils of a Ronaldo or Messi. As it happens, though, for whatever reason, Rooney hasn’t been effective in international competitions since his first one, period. So I would drop him.
Much of what made Rooney great at that first tournament was he played with no fear, the country loved the guy, there was no grumbling about his performances, he was simply one of the worlds leading young players in an England shirt playing to a level that this country hadn't seen from a young player in a very long time. Its difficult to be overly harsh on a player who has scored so frequently as Rooney has, yet if you're a great talent you have to accept fans will be harsh as they expect more, so in many ways its a compliment to the guy that we discuss him often as we know how fantastic a player Rooney can be.
Rooney is being judged by the high expectations/standards that his first England appearances brought. The team has needed more of that than has actually occurred.
Rooney's largely been good for England, but the teams have often been horribly unbalanced or poorly selected. The whole Gerrard-Lampard-Scholes debacle sums it up best. How can having those players available for one side become a problem?
Paul Merson has had another dig at Andros Townsend, after the scorer of England's equaliser pulled him up on his pre-match opinions. Part of the ex-Goon's sloppy bullshit was to belittle the winger's goalscoring record for the national side: "It was a friendly against Italy and he came on in the second half. Let’s not beat about the bush, who have his other two goals been against – Montengro and San Marino?" Only three goals and one of those was in a friendly? Nothing compared to Merson's, of course. Must be much better, eh? Played 21, scored 3, all in friendlies. Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Czech Republic.
Merson is a complete idiot. He was a decent player who ruined his career by being a drunk. Why anyone listens to him or employs him is beyond me. Most the time he seems like he's still on the bottle, i assume he is?
http://www.englandstats.com/players.php?pid=658 http://www.englandstats.com/players.php?pid=1198 6 more friendlies and 3 more goals in them to beat the mighty Mersons' superior England record, young Andros.
