Well, thanks Sven.

[Barrel of Fun]

Dave, I thought we had a vast amount of coaches covering all aspects.

The England rugby team benefited from a huge troop of coaches/psychologists etc. and we beat one of the best nations on their home soil.

Is Venables paying Gullit to big him up? Are they lovers?

 

[Marshy]

There was talk on the radio that the Mclaren/Vennables partnership will be put into place with individual coaches for various departments like they do in Rugby/American football etc.

Ie defensive coach/offensive coach.

I have no problem with that if Shearer looks after the strikers and someone like Hansen or lawrensen looks after the defence.

im not so sure this approch works.

Teams have to defend and attack as a team.

 

[Dave the OAP]

Yes , but I think we require a clear out....Sammy Lee , The ex liverpool goalkeeper , Tord Grip ...and start again.

McClaren - manager
Vennables - Chief Coach
Shearer/ Lineker - Offensive Coach ( strikers)
Lawrensen/hansen - Defensive Coach/s
Shilton/Bob Wilson - Goalkeeping Coach/s
Hoddle/ Gullit - Midfield coaches

You have to have people who have "done it". People who the players can respect.

 

[Dave the OAP]

im not so sure this approch works.

Teams have to defend and attack as a team.

That is fine, but you need to get the basics right....and the basics are knowing how to defend, how to distribute and how to attack.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Yes , but I think we require a clear out....Sammy Lee , The ex liverpool goalkeeper , Tord Grip ...and start again.

McClaren - manager
Vennables - Chief Coach
Shearer/ Lineker - Offensive Coach ( strikers)
Lawrensen/hansen - Defensive Coach/s
Shilton/Bob Wilson - Goalkeeping Coach/s
Hoddle/ Gullit - Midfield coaches

You have to have people who have "done it". People who the players can respect.

I suspect Sammy Lee wil stay, he is actually one of the few full time people there.

Clemence will survive as goalkeeping coach, he has survived previous regime changes.

Hoddle will not work for the FA again.

I am not sure Lawersen should be allowed near defenders again, he hardly sorted Newcastle's defence out.

 

[Dave the OAP]

I suspect Sammy Lee wil stay, he is actually one of the few full time people there.

Clemence will survive as goalkeeping coach, he has survived previous regime changes.

Hoddle will not work for the FA again.

I am not sure Lawersen should be allowed near defenders again, he hardly sorted Newcastle's defence out.

but there in lies the problem. baggage!

We all knew Hoddle was a decent coach...his views on life made him unpaletable, but I think a low profile role would be ideal. Lawrensen was not blessed with a decent team at Newcastle...at least he would have Ferdinand , Terry carragher etc to work with. If Robinson's performances were anything to do with Clements's coaching then he should be the first up against the wall. What exactly does Sammy lee actually do?

 

[Uncle Buck]

but there in lies the problem. baggage!

We all knew Hoddle was a decent coach...his views on life made him unpaletable, but I think a low profile role would be ideal. Lawrensen was not blessed with a decent team at Newcastle...at least he would have Ferdinand , Terry carragher etc to work with. If Robinson's performances were anything to do with Clements's coaching then he should be the first up against the wall. What exactly does Sammy lee actually do?

Not sure how Robinson is coming in for flack. He conceded 2 goals all tournament. Yes at times his handling looked iffy, but it did not cost us.

Dodgy excuse, but how much of this was down to the ball that a number of the keepers had commented on not being ideal for the keepers.

 

[Dave the OAP]

I just thought Robinson did not look as commanding as he does normally...perhaps it was the ball.

 

[Uncle Buck]

I just thought Robinson did not look as commanding as he does normally...perhaps it was the ball.

He did have some moments in this tournament where he did not look at his best, but he did not cost us.

I do think on this front, England need a fit Chris Kirkland, simply to give Robinson some real competition, as presently there is none in that position.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

When the dust settles it will be seen this World Cup could have been ours. I am tempted to say should have been ours. The draw just opened up for us.

We had the players, we had the support, we had the draw. And we are home at the Quarter-finals knocked out by one of the third-world countries of Europe.

 

[London Calling]

Where Robbo and Veneables have been good is building a team around key players. Whether it was Linekar and Platt or, Shearer and Gascoigne and Sheringham. An international team can not just just be the best 11 lads in the country, it needs to be Team. Sven never achieved that, he chopped and changed too much and like Taylor was prepared to put players in any old position as long as he could get them on the park.

In the end it appeared he never had the respect of his players! Interestingly when you hear, the 1990 players talk about Robson, they still rate him very highly. Will Sven get such accolades.

Statistically Sven has done well. Our best ever? He has helped to improve the time players have b4 big tournaments. He has been prepared to blood young players. Hoddle had to have his arms literally broken to try out Owen and Beckham. So he has had some successes. But whether the job wore him down, or he became tired of our critical and perhaps racist press. I believe he has laboured over the last few years and the team has nort progressed. I go back to what Leo said. "We do not impse our selves on the other side". Basically we don't convince ourselves let alone anyone else.But could any good manager had done the same? But, Basically Sven is not a big tournament manager.

Where Robbo and Veneables have been good is building a team around key players

 

[zefarelly]

We had the players, we had the support, we had the draw. And we are home at the Quarter-finals knocked out by one of the third-world countries of Europe.

Sven has had a few good moments, and has played a part in trying to drag the Fia into the 1900's, maybe someone else will come along and grag us into the 2000's before the next world cup.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Any manager who has had these good players for 3 major tournaments and only reached the Quarter-Final each time is a bloody failure.

However, it is not just about having talented players. The Spanish League is, arguably, the strongest in the world, yet Spain have fared no better than England over the same 6-year period.

It is all about being able to deal with egos, making players believe in a system and philosophy of playing football.

Sven was at his best in his first year when his ideas were still fresh and anything was better than Keegan. After that he was poor.

Moving forward, I do not believe that McLaren will be able to deal with the egos of the players. Why should they listen to him? He's been a Number 2 man at Man Utd / England, what we need is a Big Time No.1.

 

[keaton]

Sven's taken us to three quarter-finals, which as we're not in the top four teams in the world is a pretty good record, especially if you consider the situation when he took over.

He also picked Hargreaves, who most papers have as our player of the tournament and which evry few of the press and public would've included in the squad

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

W And we are home at the Quarter-finals knocked out by one of the third-world countries of Europe.

That about sums up the English view of the game really.

Portugual have beten us twice now in the past 2 years.
They have a better team than us that gel together and unlike some of our so called "superstars" have a bottle.

 

[Easy 10]

Well, the Portugese team certainly have plenty of gel, I'll give them that.

 

[London Irish]

Just because the guy in charge immediaetly before him was f***ing useless, it doesn't turn SGE into some kind of footballing messiah you know.

It seems as though every England manager of recent years has been "f***ing useless" if we listen to you though. In your rants, you have seen to have lost the power to distinguish between genuine disasters like Taylor and Keegan and someone like Sven, who, although he might not have succeeded in winning the biggest prize in world football, at least made the England team a genuine player on the world stage again.

Just what derogatory language will you now have left to describe the McClaren era? You're a bit like the boy who cried wolf - if Sven has been terrible, you are now are left with absolutely no standards whatsoever to measure what might be coming next.

 

[London Irish]

What is going to be the thing to moan about now he has gone?

Unless McLaren gets his coaching staff spot on I cannot see things getting better, but more likely a post 1990 down turn, but we shall see.

This tournament we had not been playing well, but had been getting through the rounds. Aside from the sending off, the big gripe was our inability to score from the spot.

Sven took over the Keegan mess and got us to the tournaments, however ultimately he has failed as he did not win them, but some of the stick given is unreal, I guess it is that he is not English.

I think that's a fair summary.

In my view, Sven got England punching at, or very near, its weight in world football, but he wasn't able to make them better than the sum of the parts, as a team. For that he will probably be judged a failure and quite fairly so. But I think it is probably an honourable failure.

On the penalties, it was the players that let him down, not the other way round.

The jealously that has arisen from his utterly obscene salary, about £24m for his years in charge, is a side issue. No one should be paid that level of money - but that is the FA's fault, not Sven's. None of us would refuse money chucked at us.

 

[Easy 10]

It seems as though every England manager of recent years has been "f***ing useless" if we listen to you though. In your rants, you have seen to have lost the power to distinguish between genuine disasters like Taylor and Keegan and someone like Sven, who, although he might not have succeeded in winning the biggest prize in world football, at least made the England team a genuine player on the world stage again.

Just what derogatory language will you now have left to describe the McClaren era? You're a bit like the boy who cried wolf - if Sven has been terrible, you are now are left with absolutely no standards whatsoever to measure what might be coming next.

Oh blimey, a psycho-analysis from LI. I'm sure I'm not worthy.

If abject mediocrity was the target under Sven, then by christ we've passed that with flying colours. The benchmark for England success now seems to be qualification, and the Quarter Finals. And playing shit to get there is fine because, well, the results are the important thing and we'll just keep telling ourselves we'll play better soon.

I'm sorry if I'm a little frustrated, but the fact is, we made hard work of a feeble qualifying group to get to Germany. We then scraped wins against Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago and Ecuador, and then bombed out against a garbage Portugal side. And that makes us a "player" on the World stage again ? Do me a favour. We've played crap football throughout, and I'm frankly sick of people excusing it all and telling me that we should just be grateful to be there. Its bollocks. We have the players to do a damn sight better than that, but for a coach who had NO CLUE how to organise, galvanise, motivate or even pick a damn squad that would give us some bloody OPTIONS when it (predictably) started going tits up.

Graham Taylor was hopeless, but there was a real dirge of talent at the time, as many of the key players of the squad of 1990 were reaching the end of their careers. Keegan had more to choose from, but was a hopeless tactician. Hoddles team was shaping up well, and we were very unlucky to go out in 1998. Eriksson was supposedly brought in as some master tactician, and certainly had the players to make a real impact, but he has been exposed as a complete charlatan who couldn't make an effective tactical change if his life depended on it.

Oh yeah, but we qualified. Great. We then utterly stank the place out, but I guess thats our standing on the world stage eh. Lets just accept it and count how fortunate we were to have the genius of Eriksson bestowed upon our humble squad for 6 years. Boy, we came so far under him didn't we.

 

[NMH]

It seems as though every England manager of recent years has been "f***ing useless" if we listen to you though. In your rants, you have seen to have lost the power to distinguish between genuine disasters like Taylor and Keegan and someone like Sven, who, although he might not have succeeded in winning the biggest prize in world football, at least made the England team a genuine player on the world stage again.

Just what derogatory language will you now have left to describe the McClaren era? You're a bit like the boy who cried wolf - if Sven has been terrible, you are now are left with absolutely no standards whatsoever to measure what might be coming next.

Do give over, we are trying to tactically match every side we play, thereby becoming ordinary....and looking just like a match for ordinary tactics.

f*** that. We kept blithering on about having "the best England side ever" and yet we wasted the individual skills and ability to (apparently) outplay anyone - and looked like a dull team of hopefuls, no more interesting than Switzerland, or Ukraine.

Another wasted chance, playing uninspiring crap. France were a revelation the game after us, and ended up as deserved winners by playing the beautiful game, jogo bonito, BETTER THAN BRAZIL!

How have Brazil won so many worlkd cups....by being tactical geniuses?
It makes me really sad, sick to watch.
Sven Eriksson, what a f***ing JOKE!