Some thoughts about the England football team

[goldstone]

The few positives to come out of the World Cup adventure for me are:
- We have found in Ben Foster a better and more reliable goalie than Joe Hart. His ball handling and distribution were excellent.
- Luke Shaw was very good. A mature performance from the youngster.
- Sterling has real potential, but, as yet, he is not as good as people are saying he is. Needs more time to develop and mature.
- Lallana could be very good given more starts. Why the hell was he taken off before the end of the game?


Also:
- Sturridge needs to improve his shooting. How many did he miss last night?
- Gerrard should retire from international football. Why was he brought on as a sub last night? Pointless.
- Rooney is not the player he thinks he is and the British media thinks he is. He is good, but far from great.
- Baines was shown up.
- We have a problem in central defence and need to find our best two players for those positions quickly.


Overall a reasonable performance by England, but "reasonable" is not what we were looking for. If you take into account the outrageous salaries these players are on, then their performance rating sinks to the "unacceptable" level. For "superstar" salaries we demand superstar performances and none of the team came anywhere close to that.

 

[MarioOrlandi]

Agree, but I would add the ability to concentrate for the whole game and to eradicate the "Hollywood Ball" 60yd pass in the air which is cut out by the defence 90% of the time (sic Gerrard) this is often referred to as "plan B"

 

[bn1&bn3 Albion]

The few positives to come out of the World Cup adventure for me are:
- We have found in Ben Foster a better and more reliable goalie than Joe Hart. His ball handling and distribution were excellent.
- Luke Shaw was very good. A mature performance from the youngster.
- Sterling has real potential, but, as yet, he is not as good as people are saying he is. Needs more time to develop and mature.
- Lallana could be very good given more starts. Why the hell was he taken off before the end of the game?


Also:
- Sturridge needs to improve his shooting. How many did he miss last night?
- Gerrard should retire from international football. Why was he brought on as a sub last night? Pointless.
- Rooney is not the player he thinks he is and the British media thinks he is. He is good, but far from great.
- Baines was shown up.
- We have a problem in central defence and need to find our best two players for those positions quickly.


Overall a reasonable performance by England, but "reasonable" is not what we were looking for. If you take into account the outrageous salaries these players are on, then their performance rating sinks to the "unacceptable" level. For "superstar" salaries we demand superstar performances and none of the team came anywhere close to that.

The same keeper who turned his back on England because he wasn't good enough to be number 1? He's played 1 game, a game where he was only tested once, it's going to take a lot more than that to earn the number 1 spot...

 

[seagully]

We desperately need a decent holding midfielder and a good centre back. Going forward we looked excellent at times and that will only improve as the current crop get used to playing together and the younger players mature. However Gerrard looked a shadow of his Liverpool self and Jagielka was shown up as being very average. Worryingly I can't see Jones or Smalling being up to the job at CB and there are no real contenders for holding midfielder except for Carrick.

 

[crodonilson]

Fortunately our Euro group is a doddle and given that with its expansion top 2 qualify + a play off for 3rd we really need to blood some youngsters and give them game time. I would go along the lines of:

..................Hart
Walker, Cahill, Stones, Shaw
Wilshere, Rodwell, Barkley
Sturridge, Rooney, Sterling

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The below was posted in 2014. 2014. FFS. Shaw, Wilshere Rodwell and Rooney have been replaced by who, the FS? WTFS? FFS. This is embarrassing.

Fortunately our Euro group is a doddle and given that with its expansion top 2 qualify + a play off for 3rd we really need to blood some youngsters and give them game time. I would go along the lines of:

..................Hart
Walker, Cahill, Stones, Shaw
Wilshere, Rodwell, Barkley
Sturridge, Rooney, Sterling