Huddlestone barely played last season and Sturridge was well down the pecking order and stroppy at Chelsea, Croydon. Richards, Lennon and Carrick should've been starters though, for me. Johnson justified his selection ahead of Richards. I don't think that certain others did the same. The likes of Oxo-cube, Henderson, Jones and Kelly would've been better served by taking part in the GB Olympic team. Hodgson had to go with most of the usual suspects, as he inherited the side late on, but I'm not sure what these youngsters will have got out of it. Barely used, if at all and exposed to the standard bollocks that goes with the side. On the plus side, I thought that Downing did well.
im not sure if you are being sarcastic...but i think out of everyone in the squad he can hold his head up high as he brought his club form to the national set up. well done Downing
last night i said "Downing needs to come on for Young". i couldn't believe what I was hearing myself say. says a lot about Young's performance!!
Huddlestone is one of those players who makes the squad for a couple of low priority qualifiers, but never gets a run-out as his name isn't Lampard or Gerrard. Lennon has been off the radar for a couple of years, mainly because Walcott scored a hat trick in Zagreb four year ago (which means...what, exactly?), whilst Sturridge has shown he has more to offer than Young or Downing when he has played (although he probably regrets moving to Chelsea, given they were hardly known for nurturing young talents even before Roman's dropped anchor) I read a few comments about Jones, Kelly and Butland learning by being in the squad for the tournament and that will serve them well. But will it really? All they will have learned is that the same players get called up, which anyone with an objective view of the England team will have noticed years ago from their own sofa. Besides, what lessons will they take with them back to their clubs for next season? How not to mark Pirlo? Watching the Italy/Croatia match would've taught them more!
Huddlestone's problem is that he's never really held down a first XI place for us, Croydon. I'm a fan of his, so I'd like to see him make more of an impact in the coming season. I was very disappointed at the way our second XI fell apart last time out, especially early on. Lennon's work off the ball seems to go unnoticed, I think. The way that he stretches the opposition merely by his extremely wide position and pace never gets picked up and he tracks back with far more conviction than most. Even the possibility of a role as an impact sub is overlooked.
England could not drop Ashley Young but Germany and Spain have no issue dropping Gomez and Toress respectively..these are the kind of reasons that everyone else takes the piss out of the English set up and rightly so as i do that also.
Anyone else notice that Stanstead doesn't look anything like Wooton Bassett? Turns out that Judas was full of ****. Who knew?
Sooner we sell Modric and give TH a regular starting place the better. Cash in while the iron is hot I say, he had a decent Euro.
Huddlestone is no Modric, I'm afraid. We would need a more suitable replacement than that. I wonder if Cabaye could be tempted?
Was reading the interview from Roy He just sounds like a more eloquent arry redknapp, as if arry was England manager and had said the above, he would have been slaughtered for being clueless and making excuses and not understanding why the team lose. As if he really understood about possession or seeing more of the ball, he would have changed the system. And before anyone says "he never had the players" well whos fault if that? who picked the squad. This country may be lacking in real talent yet thats no excuse for setting the team up to basically defend for their lives (which they were fairly useless at considering the amount of clear cut chances italy had). It will be interesting to see which system Roy uses to get to the world cup as clearly 4-4-2 doesn't work against the top teams, it may work agaisnt teams with lower quality that will allow chances on the break, but against the top teams England look so poor, i mean its pathetic at times. Take a look at Greece, even with their limited players they score goals agaisnt quality opposition and even when there defending for their lives they still manage to get out their own half and attack as the game goes on. Roy needs to drop this 4-4-2 and create a system that allows the team to gain possession and not be scared of conceding chances as there is no adventure in this team, its prob the dullest England team I have ever seen. However, if we had a system of say 3-5-2 (like italy have used) or a 4-2-3-1 system it allows the team to actually stand a chance of seeing the ball in midfield as last night as soon as one of the england defenders won the ball back, what was his options? punt it up field!.... as parker and gerrard were so knackered from trying to win the ball and protect the defence that even if they managed to get up field, they were out numbered and out muscled.
I'd still say at least England behaved reasonably, tried hard, and in one game (Sweden) showed character. That's considerably more than they've done the last few tournaments, so I give them some credit. They defended well, and the defenders plus Parker and Gerrard were reasonably good throughout the tournament. On the other hand, England was a train wreck in midfield and beyond against Italy (not that they got beyond midfield more often than very rarely). Rooney was awful, Young was worse. Milner was not so bad against Italy as he's been, but he had an awful tournament. Welbeck was a non-factor. I really, really hate to say this but the one attacker who played well was Carroll--though once again almost the only threats were Gerrard crosses. As to technical inferiority, here's kind of a kid's eye view: What I saw was that there were always three or so Italians surrounding the ball, regardless of whether England or Italy had it. What this meant, of course, was that Italy generally had an easy pass open and England were on their way to losing the ball. If only English players had been as determined as Italians to surround the ball it would have been a much better effort.
Also if Roy was such a great tactician, why did he leave us with 2 strikers up front in the second half (who were picking their noses), no outlet in centre midfield and Pirlo given a free role to do whatever damage he want. I heard Roy say along the lines of "we tried to stop pirlo" did you? I never saw anyone trying to stop him playing. Its easy to throw on a winger or striker in a game when the team is getting chances, but when we're faced with a tough game then thats were you see how "clever" a manager really is and last night may have showed the limitations of England as a nation but they also imo showed the limitations of Roys "tactical thinking".
one up front seem's to be the way to go with five midfielders,England playing only four midfielders were over run,add to that our inability to keep the ball resulted in Italy dominating the game
Croatia stopped Pirlo with Modric and Vukojevic, and there's a simple reason for that - Modric wasn't dropping deep, like Gerrard continually does so for England. England continually make the same error; rather than get tight and try and force errors, they pile back into the 18-yard box in the hope that the opposition don't get past them - they did it against Argentina in '98, they did it against Portugal in '06, and they did it against Italy last night. All this does is hand the initiative to the opposition and, frankly, what's the backup plan if they do score? If Balotelli and Cassano weren't so wasteful, the tactic would have failed so they would have had to get forward. There were plenty of potential central midfield combinations that could have lessened Pirlo's influence and given England a platform to get forward - Parker alongside Carrick, Rodwell, Cleverley or, at a push, Milner would have been more effective, yet Milner was the only one called up to the squad, and he was deployed on the right wing presumably to tuck in as Johnson got forward, which was a ridiculous brief because Johnson was pinned back for the majority of the match. One stat I read says that Pirlo had as many completed passes as the whole England team combined. That is damning for countless reasons, not least it underlines how ineffectual the marking was, as well as how bad England's passing was and, by extension, just how uninspiring it was - the options were hoof it long in the hope somebody ran onto it, or prod it two yards to the nearest teammate and hope they do something with it. On the one hand, England are a team who can say the quarter finals at the Euros was probably the best they could do, but on the other hand the teams who list the quarter finals as a minimum requirement or even as a failure - teams like Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Portugal, Russia - have more about them than England, not least all of them play like a team instead of a disparate group of individuals. Heck, even Greece can teach the England team about how to play as one.
Redknapp actually understood he needed to bring on Sandro and change from 4411 to 4-2-3-1 when Arsenal played at WHL and were getting the ball too much. It is notable that not only did Hodgson not do that against Italy, he left out the players from his squad who could have strengthened the midfield.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...n-bid-to-put-off-Italians-scoring-winner.html ...didn't work, but
