The Scotland defence really were awful. But coming from an England supporter that doesn't mean much. I lost count of the unforced errors made by our lot in our own half. A decent team would have easily beaten us tonight. Anyway, 3 points. As long as we qualify for the WC there is always a chance that from out of nowhere a decent centre-half might turn up sometime.
Scotland got themselves into positions that a better team could have threatened from....but let's not exaggerate, not many were on target. I would feel for them if Hart made brilliant saves, but he didn't have to. This is why Scotland are where they are....they have to turn good positions into actual attempts.
I'm still not sure on Townsend to be honest. Still think he's massively overrated and a bit of a one trick pony... which in turn makes him easy to defend against for any defender of decent quality. Saying all that though, he has improved massively over the last 12-18 months and if we are going to play with out and out wingers then he's definitely worth a shot imo. Probably from the bench though as there's players clearly ahead of him.
Simple. You end up with 11 English footballers surrounded by English teammates. At club level they are surrounded by better players and this look better themselves.
Sterling is a great example of what I call the 'English disease'. Really ****ing quick so he must be good. We continually value pace and power above technical ability. Example... the same hype for Sterling was given to Shaun Wright-Phillips not too long ago... Until we address the above (along with our entire youth set up across the country) we will continue to achieve the square root of sod all regardless of the players we have and the manager in charge
Need to add something cos I didn't say what I originally wanted to say in response to your comment as I got on a bit of rant .... I wouldn't even use the word 'better', it's all about technical ability. There's plenty of sides across Europe who man for man don't have the talent we do... but technically they are so much better. How many players do we have who are comfortable with the ball at their feet in tight situations? Lallana, Stones.... umm struggling already, maybe Dele Alli and Wilshere (whos always crocked) too. Other than that I'm honestly struggling... that's our biggest issue when it comes to tournaments imo.
You think? He's far from the complete defender, but he's technically miles ahead of any other English defender... there's a reason Pep wanted him. Though in a weird way I don't think he's the best manager to develop the techniques he's missing at the moment.
And the media have decided he is going to be "World Class" and lead England to win the World Cup only to fail and get absolutely trashed by the same media who built him up.
We've heard this before about an Everton youth product. In fact, the coaches in their academy must be very good at talking up a youngsters ability. As well as Rooney, both Barkley and Stones were supposed to be the 'future of England' etc. For me, I just haven't seen exactly what it is that Stones possesses. He just seems to make mistake after mistake whenever I watch him. I can't see him ever being as good as John Terry or Sol Campbell. I'm really not bothered about having pretty tiki-taka ball-playing centre backs. Just give me a couple of no-nonsense bruisers who will put their head or body in the way of anything. We are England after all, and beggars can't be choosers.
He was hyped far too much on the back of a few good performances early on. Classic media helping to ruin young English players before they've even made it.
To be fair, Stones came from the Barnsley youth. I just don't like giving Everton praise for anything these days.
I've been banging that drum for years and years. It's all about teaching kids to win and that is so wrong.
For supporters of a team that have only one major tournament (England not Saints), there is such a sense of entitlement. England qualify for almost every tournament there is....a lot of countries would love to be in that position, so we are obviously not crap. We probably suffer from having such a strong national league....so many foreign players effectively blocking English-born youngsters (and nothing we can do about that even if we wanted to). I have been banging the same drum as Fats...comes down to a new build from the bottom. Our U21s are looking good, but they should be allowed to keep the best players and not have them snatched away to provide a sticking plaster to the senior side. They won the Toulon tournament...which was a start, but imagine the confidence engendered by winning a major cup and then progressing to the senior squad (largely intact as a team). Saints have benefitted from this...why not England. I would concentrate on the youngsters and leave the senior squad to cope how it can. How does it benefit a youngster to be promoted too early and learn to play in desperation with the seniors....let them play with youngsters they have been familiar with for years. We could benefit in the future.
Just a thought on the use of foreign players. With Brexit are we going to eventually have as many European players?
Brexit doesn't mean no foreigners can come in, but you can be selective. However, with regards to football, it depends what rule the FA introduce....presumably the same eligibility rules will apply to European players as apply to those outside Europe at the moment.
I'm of the opinion (probably flawed) that a large part of the England team selection is based on PR. If players from 'big clubs' are selected, then the 'armchair fanbase' that claim to follow those big clubs will be more inclined to be interested in the matches. This in turn leads to more shirt sales, and higher advertising revenue for/from the TV channels that broadcast the matches, so the TV companies are more willing to pay a large amount of money to show England matches. This benefits the entity that is 'England', so the hierarchy lean on the team selectors to pick the players from the big teams. People who follow football closely are probably able to point out far better English players than the ones on the pitch, but team selection would appear to involve little consideration for ability or teamwork, so we never get the best available team. I could be entirely wrong about this.
Nice theory. But with an operation of such scale eventually somebody would come out and say what's going on. (This is my argument against most conspiracy theories)
