Jamie Carragher's words - not mine! http://www1.skysports.com/football/...arragher-impressed-by-welsh-clubs-improvement
All Swans fans should see this! A few seasons ago we were at the bottom of Division 4 - so to hear an ex-England international footballer making comments like that should make everyone at the Club feel proud
Easily done ... pick Britton, Routledge and Shelvey, they're part way there. Except Hodgson wouldn't know where to get them to line up.
Would have a lot more time for Carragher if his voice wasn't like a dog whistle! Listening to him is painful but agree with much of what he says - but it aint gonna happen! England are not a good international team and labour under the misguided fact that they should beat teams because they are England! They need a complete overhaul; rebuild from the bottom up! They are not going to win anything in the foreseeable future - need to forget a 'quick fix' and look at what is wrong with the national game. The 'England style' is redundant and not working; agree with much of what 'dog whistle' says, but the trouble with those in power at England FC is that they think they have a divine right to compete at the international level! This is not the case - they have slipped to 16th (or there about's) in the world rankings and they need to look at why they are at the lowest ranking in years! It's because the football they play is so easy for their opponents to counter. They need to go back to the drawing board, realise that they are not going to compete for a while, and trust in youth and a system that may bring success in the future.
A Lot of people would like to see england play like swansea USE to play is more like because they cant possibly want them to play like us now....it would be suicide....check results and see for yourselves... play the liverpool way that we use to be like and that is the way to go....
.......I'm a little fishy swimming up the river..... .......hello, what's this? A nice juicy worm.... .......shall I eat it, or is it a trap?......... Watch next week's gripping instalment of 'Bite or Not Bite' to find out....
There are a lot of problems in the England set up that need to be resolved, but don't use the FIFA rankings as a reference for that - they're really badly weighted and give teams like Colombia and the USA a ridiculously high rank. The PLO rankings are more reliable, and put England at 6th - which I still think its a bit high, but at least its based on a more sensible formula. Agree wtih you otherwise though. We need a complete overhaul of the way youth players are treated in England, and far more assistance needs to be given to smaller clubs youth academies - and big clubs have to start giving their youngsters first team opportunities, not loaning them out like Andros Townsend or Scott Sinclair. What's more, we need a new generation of coaching staff tuned up to the modern game. Steps are already being taken in the vein of Germany at youth level to improve things (eg. introduction of small training pitches and a focus on the technical aspects of play rather than just speed and strength) and hopefully that will improve England over time. It'll take a while, maybe another decade, but it's not an unfixable mess. Hopefully the days of the press hyping everyone up are fading a bit, but there's noting wrong with a bit of cautious optimism - there's no point just moaning all the time and getting nothing done. If we aim to be mediocre, we'll end up ****. If we aim to be like the best, we at least won't fall short of standards now. To be honest, the last Euros was the most optimistic I've been as an England fan for a while - they did a decent job against tough opposition and nobody got their hopes up. Granted Italy were unlucky not to tear them apart, but Italy ended up being finalists so the team can't have been that bad. But importantly for us, what a great compliment to Swansea this is. I'm not sure its entirely accurate even coming from a real pro like Carra (if England had an equivalent of Carra in his prime now he'd play every game), because to be fair we don't have much on the teams England want to be like - Spain, Germany etc. But it's still a nice compliment.
