England's game against Montenegro was nothing new. Many of England's players were lack lustre. Namely, Gareth Barry who was quite horrible. His passing was off, his pace was non-existent, and his vision needed testing. In fact the only decent player on the field aside from Steven Gerrard was Rio Ferdinand, and he has been out with injury for three months. But people have to start looking at England for what they are. Just as the French people have to look at their national team for what they are.
I am not going to point the finger of blame, but everyone has an opinion. And as the age old saying goes, opinions are a lot like penises and vaginas...everyone has one (or both but that is another story for another time). England are a group of players who will always fail in the eyes of the media. Even if they somehow got passed Germany at the World Cup, even if they won the whole thing, the press would still harp on the early performances because criticism sells.
Fabio Capello knew coming into this job that the level of scrutiny from the press was very high, and as we all know, the press' opinion becomes gospel in the minds of those who read their columns in daily newspapers. But after a quick glance at Yahoo News it seems that all the press want to do is pile more misery on an already frustrating situation. Now I know I am regurgitating things that almost everyone says, but seriously, the press is single handedly destroying our national sport with its expectations.
Sure we have some of the best players in the world, but so do Argentina. Now I don't read much Argentinian press but I'm sure once the initial grilling was over, the press stopped harping on it because they, like I'm sure all of us realise, the national team needs to move forward, and nobody when England played their first Euro 2012 qualification game against Bulgaria had forgiven the dismal performance from the World Cup.
Brush it off and get on with it.
Last night was not cataclysmic as the press lead us to believe. Hell, it happens. It happens to the best of teams. Montenegro, for their lowly world ranking are actually a very strong side who play very deep against teams that are better than them. That is what we saw last night. They also had a great goalkeeper.
I also read some comments left by some disgruntled England fans that insinuate that they reason England are not performing is because our manager isn't English. Pardon my French but that is bollocks. During World Cup qualification those are probably the same people who were licking Capello's balls because of the great job he was doing. STOP BLAMING MANAGERS!
I guess what I'm saying is this, the England team are who they are. One day, sometime in the future, when there is less pressure on them as a whole, who knows, it may happen. But we all need to stop believing in the ideal that England are the best team in the world, because, quite frankly, we aren't, and the sooner the press realise that, the less time they can spend blaming the manager, because that is the done thing in football now days. Patience is dead.
Firstly, interesting blog I have to give u that…
ReplyDeleteOn the note of the players were lack lustre, they couldn’t get more than 2 passes together in the final third of the pitch so that’s a bit of an understatement. They were bland, showed no creativity, didn’t think to shift from wide to narrow at times when their numbers were up, minds were far from in the game, no fluency or link between defense and attack (apart from the 60 yard cross field booters by Rio which presented no real threat) and no end product. Terrible is what it was…
In terms of media affiliation, I think that aint the main problem (although it derails their minds from the game) but I put it all down to ‘PERCEPTION’. We need to face reality and really look at how good this England squad really is. Our choices in attack were hysterical and framing davies as the savior of England is like bringing sand to a beach, POINTLESS! With mr. crouchy and a very troubled wazza partnering, there is no hope in attack (defoe having my only bit of consideration being injured). Compare that to an Argentine, Dutch, Spanish, German or even Uruguayan strike force for that matter. Middle of the pitch is shocking with belligerent barry showing the same true class he did against Germany at the world cup (he has made every capello starting 11 surprisingly). Gerrard shouldn’t be playing that deep and if so then channel the play narrow so that they play through him (saw glimpses on the night)as opposed to a wider option and rely on an inexperienced young and adam who truly suffered on the night which takes me to the main point ‘management’.
On capello, firstly we have to respect that he was little to work with and his track record is impeccable. BUT, how the hell did he not change it up when things were so static for 90 mins??? It was quite clear that they set up to defend and always be on the look out for the overlap of our bursting full backs (which we hardly saw) so every time our wingers were on the ball, 2 players were always pressing. I don’t blame a.johnson or young as the manager should have done something to protect them and free them up!!! He could have reverted to a narrow approach and played of gerrard which meant that they could have gotten in behind the defense a lot more. He is known to be the tactician so im surprised at his antics and this aint the first time. Secondly, how did barry play the full 90 minutes let alone every game hes every managed? Jack whilsire was an option to mix it up a little and pump fresh energy into a static midfield but hey what do I know about tactics huh…?
So to make the transition into world class, we need to work from ground up (like germany) and build a fresh team with the likes of huddlestone, adam, whilsire n co but let the FA take responsibility in terms of communicating future plans to the supporting base and eradicate any perception of world cup/euro cup dreams and false hope… Once we learn to accept the true value in our team, the media can only choke on their own words cause there is no unnecessary hype surrounding the team (less of the booing as if we’re at a pantomime). FA needs to appoint an English manager (Harry Houdini obviously being in pole position) as player interaction along with cultural similarities are absolutely imperative! Another thing they need to address is enforcing English players to come up through the ranks and armor them with playing time under their belts at top level. This new 6+5 crap or whatever it is means nothing as arsenal proved that you don’t necessarily have to include English players into your squad but players who have been training in England for the past 3 years (which ultimately means that it will only intensify snapping up more of barcelona’s youths). The state of English football is like hiphop and someone has to act now and resuscitate!!!
K
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