Doom and Gloom over the England team, you should read the French newspapers about their team. After the last sparkling 0-0 in a friendly, all of the players were marked on their performance. The best got a 5 for effort, the worst got 0, and the paper described that as generous.
I will go out on a limb with this prediction.................................. We will play football!
lmao! thanks BB, do i have to eat lots of haggis? I won't mind, i love haggis! lol And if i could, i'd change my name to Tart an' Army..i love it! lol
we'll do diddly squat, it's typical get hyped up for some strange reason over friendly results and when it comes to the tournaments we do crap
A lot depends on the draw, who goes through to the last 4 or not. All of the top nations have their bogey teams and need to avoid them. Germany, for example, have never beaten Italy in a competitive match ! They also don't like playing Spain or any of the ex Yugoslav sides (too physical !), or in Spain's case who deprive them of possession. The way to deal with Spain is to get them early on, and to score quickly against them - we still don't know if they have a second gear and can come from behind. Against the Dutch it's better to face them later in a tournament, but all of them are beatable by most of the other 16 teams if played against in the right way. Our problem is our history. If we could successfully forget that we haven't been to a final since 1966 - start from a zero hour - and simply concentrate on raising our game during a competition on a match by match basis (something we never do !) then we have a chance. Greece and Denmark were not the best teams in Europe when they won this tournament - the ultimate winners are often not the best team, but rather the one who from the last 8 onwards feels that their name is on the cup
Our first main problem is having Capello on a contract until after this tournament. If we had someone on a contract until after the next World Cup, they might be more likely to drop some of the has-beens and start blooding more of the youngsters and give them tournament experience, building up to the WC. As it is, Capello will want to bow out as best he can tot ry and keep his reputation in tact, so will call on the old guard and the likes of Terry, Ferdinand, Gerrard, Lampard will all feature, in the hope they will perform! I'd happily take an early-ish exit if it meant getting rid of the prima-donnas, and bringing in players who will be in the sqaud for the next 4, 6, 8 years! As for how we will do... we will scrape though the group stages (as long as we get one of the hosts, and avoid France & Portugal), we will come up against either Germany or Netherlands, will be winning 1-0 with a great defensive display but little attack, until Rooney (recalled to the team) gets frustrated with the lack of service and kicks or elbows one of their players to get sent off, the game finishes 1-1 and we lose on penalties
To be fair Salisbury Capello has done more to bring youth through than many other managers I can remember, and if the international against Spain taught us anything its that maybe the less fancied squad members actually listen to his tactics build a solid unit and grind out a victory against a team with much better players. Unfortunately most of our supporters seem to think we are as technically gifted as Spain and should beat them at their own game. The realists see that we won in the only way we could win against a team so far superior and as such I feel Capello needs more credit for his tactics. Of course beating Spain was the worst thing that could have happened, as many people have already pointed out we are now going to have the usual screechings about winning the tournament, not going going to happen unfortunately.
Oh I am not having a go at Capello as such, it's more the fact that after the Euros, he won't be with the England team. so he won't mind so much about progressing the youngsters. He will want results and probably call up some of the older players to try and do this. Bringing in a lot of the youngsters has been mainly because his hand has been forced to - such as injuries to the likes of Gerrard, Ferdinand etc. It will be interesting to see if we had a fully fit squad, who he would have played in all these games! I think he is realising we can't match tactics with a team like Spain because we don't have the talent - we need to negate their strengths and play to our own. He needs to keep a solid formation... and one that most of the top teams seem to be playing now - the 4-3-3 - with the hope they can just fit into the England much better! I think most England fans are realistic about our chances.... it is the media that always gets carried away too much!
Probably get through the group but lose to a Germany/Spain the quaters because we aren't quite good enough yet...
