Croatia was just revenge, Capello clueless.

[NMH]

Is he not playing three in the middle? Barry sitting back with gerrard and lampard given the license to go forward? Three up top-Heskey, rooney, Walcott? Seems a very attacking and positive formation to me. I don't think Gerrard and Lampard have ever played together in a three man midfield before. We know that the two of them alone don't work so well , but they've both played well when paired with a holding midfielder. Let's see how they do before you start calling Capello-a man who has won major trophies wherever he's been-clueless.

He's even calling me clueless, so his opinion now has NO hope of credibility

 

[Chesney Christ]

Agree about 2006 but if you remember Eriksson was told he was leaving after that tournament, I am sure that can't have been too motivating for him, however, that is not an excuse.

The best football we have actually played in recent years in any tournament and I can go back to World Cup 82, was in Euro 2004. We were really good and I do really believe that if Rooney hadn't got injured we may have won it.

We played France off the park but lost 2-1 when they scored both goals in injury time, Beckham also missed a penalty to take us to 2-0 with about 15 to go.

We beat Switzerland 3-0.

We beat Croatia 4-2, that is one of the best games I have seen England play ever, we went 1-0 down after 5 minutes, then we were just awesome and blew them away.

If the ref wasn't going for home team Portugal (disallowing Campbells? goal), we could/should have won that quarter. Wasn't that disallowed in virtually the last minute of full/extra time.

Agree, we played very well at Euro 2004, and if Rooney hadn't got injured we would have won it.

Also, if you look at the period from when Erikksson took over in 2001, through to the second half of the Brazil game in the quarter finals of the World Cup 2002 (approximately 18 months by my calculations), we were ruddy superb. And Erikksson can take huge credit for that.

That was probably the best period of football - in terms of performances and results - for the England national team for about 40 years. In that period, we beat Argentina 1-0, beat Germany 5-1, thrashed Denmark 3-0 in the WC 2nd round, destroyed teams left, right and centre in friendlies and did not lose a SINGLE competitive game.

Don't get me wrong, Erikksson was a GOOD England manager, but by 2006 we had started to go backwards big time. The warning signs were there in the truly dreadful 1-0 defeat to Northern Ireland, where SGE played Wayne Rooney left wing and David Beckham central midfield.

By 2006 World Cup we were utterly toothless, and producing some dire performances. We were a far worse team than in 2002 and 2004, despite the fact that the players, individually, were arguably better.

So given that Erikksson had clearly taken us backwards, was it time to go? Course it was. Had Erikksson stayed, the way we were playing we probably have sneaked through to Euro 2008 in second place, but I doubt we would have done anything worthwhile once there. Just because McClaren did even worse than SGE would have done, doesn't mean Erikksson should have stayed. We should just have appointed someone decent - there were plenty of options.