I watched the last half hour of the Slovenia game and it was obvious that nobody for England 'wanted the ball'. It wasn't so much 'pass and move' as 'pass and hide'. My son is 13 and he and his friends don't give a **** about the England team, but then he has never seen England play when it looked like they gave a ****. (he was born at the perfect time to be a new City fan, tho'.)
Like I said, international football (or rugby football) brings out the worst armchair fans. Although in the case of Hull FC I think its more just disappointment at being overlooked than anything else, I mean its the first time ever an English man of Steel hasn't been selected to play for England. If a Hull City player won the PFA player of the year award and didn't make the England squad there'd be just as much outrage on this board. Personally I have no problems with the RL squad selection, the internationals are pointless and Hull's players are knackered, so it gives them a full pre-season to get ready. Although I imagine on a personal level several of them will be disappointed.
Good post and I agree with all you've said. Although I think an often overlooked aspect of all this is that most of the players simply aren't good enough. I mean how many of those players can genuinely claim to be in the top 5 players at their domestic club? Don't get me wrong there's some good players in there but there's a big gap between them and the next calibre of players.
The fact is since 1950 other countries have improved considerably. Another fact is we have never been that good. We didn't enter the first few world cups, were humiliated, including losing to the USA ,with a squad that included the likes of Matthews, Mortesen, Finnry, Mannion, Ramsey and Bert Wright. Not losing the few friendlies we had at Wembley and doing reasonably well in the home internationals masked the fact until the Hungarians brought us down to earth. In essence we won a tournament where we were the home nation and were a bit unfortunate with what was arguably a better team 4 years later. The number of non UK players here has nothing to do with it. There were hardly any in the 1970s where we failed to qualify for 2 World Cups and 2 Euros.
Pardon? A man who recently criticised one of my posts for not being clear. Yours are as clear as ****.
I agree with you that England do not have any world-class players in the side, but we should be good enough to beat Slovenia and we definitely have better players than Iceland. What we don't have is a team.
Put the entire under 21 team out.They play as a team, win! and can only get better. Bin the entire squad bar Hart. " you dont win anything with kids" and Leicester will never win feck all.... Ooo wait a mo....
