England - Bloody Hell.

We'll be there, We'll be Crap

In the build up to the Poland v England game, after the postponement for the roof not being closed and the start of the actual game, I took to Twitter in frustration and tweeted the following

“Forget Roofgate.  The real scandal is this starting line-up”

“No pace, no width, no skill”

As far as I could tell before the game started, the midfield would like up as follows;  on the right, James Milner, offering nothing going forward, giving the ball away repeatedly which allows him to show his best trait – running around after people who can actually play football.  In the centre, Michael Carrick who though he’s been picked to keep the ball, will continually give it away as it’s not like playing for Man United when you’ve always got time as you spend 90% of the game on the front foot.  Also in the centre will be Steven Gerrard who will try and dictate the game but will be let down by the failings of those around him who are not in his level which means he will start trying to play Hollywood 60 yard passes as there will be no one else willing to do anything positive.  On the left, Tom Cleverley who will not be on the left as he’ll be loafing about in the middle, passing sideways for the sake of it and having no influence whatsoever aside from making the team unbalanced and not helping out the left back at all.  Roy Hodgson is a nice guy but I’m sorry, he’s an idiot if he thinks that a line-up like this was going to be anything other than woeful.

International football is of course, all about 2 year cycles as that’s when the tournaments are.  England must be the only country in the world who go to a tournament and do very averagely (like we did in Euro 2012) and then come back, look forward to the next tournament and think “I know just what we need to freshen things up and get us ready for 2 years time.... it’s a midfielder who is 32 who has never been a regular under a succession of England managers and refused to be a standby player in the last tournament”.  Step forward Michael Carrick.  It’s not Carrick’s fault he’s been chosen of course, it’s down to Hodgson.  Hodgson has picked a player who is totally one paced and has a track record of playing poorly when he’s put under pressure.  Consequently, Carrick has never been good enough to play international football and guess what, at 32, he’s never going to be.  He’s had his chance and is a proven failure.  Time to move on.

Stan Collymore was on Twitter last week talking about our attacking midfield players, the exciting game-changing type of player who causes problems for defenders by running at them and makes them make decisions.  We have a few of them in Theo Walcott, Alex Chamberlain, Aaron Lennon, Adam Johnson and further down the list (for now) we have Adam Lallana and Raheem Sterling.  We have lots of these players who could make the national team exciting and you never know, maybe make it entertaining and successful.  However, if we have a game against anyone who is better than San Marino and Roy Hodgson has a choice to make as to who plays on the right wing.... guess who he’s going to pick?  I’ll give you a clue, it won’t be any of the players on the list I’ve just written, it’ll be James Bloody Milner.   That’s right, James Bloody Milner is going to get the nod, every single time.  Why? Because Roy is negative and sets out to not lose before he sets out to win.  You cannot be positively trying to win a game if you pick Milner.  The argument against Walcott for example is that he gives the ball away too much which he does because he tries to make things happen and will maybe take on one man too many and lose it which is of course a crime, compared to Milner who will just give the ball back to the opposition when trying to execute a 10 yard pass.  Of course though, Milner is a better defender which is exactly what you need if you’re dour and negative and never want England to achieve anything.  Again though, it’s not Milner’s fault he gets picked, which brings us onto Tom Cleverley.

When it came down to the Poland game, Roy Hodgson had to choose a player to play on the left, having decided that Carrick and Gerrard were his central midfielders.  He had the choice of Alex Chamberlain, Adam Johnson qwho are naturals or he also could have picked Leighton Baines or even Jonjo Shelvey who are left footed and could easily play there.  Roy went with Cleverley which is just plain daft a he’s never played there in his life so what the bloody hell makes him the best player to play there for England.   It’s not a negative move particularly, as Cleverley is not a particularly negative player but I feel with this one that he’s been picked out as the new Messiah (or the new Fabregas by Roy Hodgson) and so he has to play somewhere.   Roy has backed himself into a corner here by praising him to the skies but I’m sorry Roy, he really isn’t that good – he’s average at best.  I saw him play for Man United at St.Mary’s and he got totally eclipsed by Adam Lallana and James Ward-Prowse (both English) and Saints were winning 2-1 when the turning point came and Sir Alex took him off.  They won 3-2 with a young sub called Paul Scholes totally changing the game.  That’s just one game I grant you but performances in 5-0 wins against pub sides from Moldova and San Marino really don’t count for much.  I can see us turning round one day and Cleverley has 40 caps like Stewart “no goals, no assists” Downing and then people start questioning how when he doesn’t actually do anything much – again, it’s not his fault he gets picked and he tries really hard but is completely out of his depth.  If he played for a mid table side he wouldn’t be anywhere near the England set up and this is another issue.  When it comes to England selection, it’s better to be an average player at a top club than the star player at an average club.  And, now the biggest talking point... Wayne Rooney.

Rooney is our best player as we are repeatedly told by Roy Hodgson.  This is almost as big a load of rubbish as saying that Tom Cleverley is the new Cesc Fabregas.  If I was manager of a team and a particular player had not played well for it in 8 or so years, I wouldn’t pick him and I definitely wouldn’t stand up say that he’s my best player which basically says “he will play whenever he’s available and is undroppable”.  The most interesting England match of recent times was the 3-2 win over Sweden in the Euro’s when out best player was suspended and Carroll and Welbeck were up front.  They both scored and England won and as an attacking side, were decent.  The next game was against Ukraine and Rooney came back in, Carroll was dropped for no other reason but to accommodate Rooney and England and particularly Rooney, were terrible, even though we fluked a 1-0 win with Rooney scoring from 4 inches after the keeper had a mare.  Then of course, the game that mattered against Italy and a clearly unfit Rooney was knackered after half an hour and should have come off but he was left to wheeze around for another 90 minutes, to the detriment of the rest of the team.  Hodgson then denied there was an issue with his fitness when the whole world could see that there was. 

Fast forward a bit and he got made captain for the game against the pub team of the San Marino Arms, scored a couple of goals and suddenly he’s saying he’s a reformed character and wants to be full time captain etc.  He shouldn’t even be in the team if it was picked on form and as we are only 6 months on from when he pointlessly kicked a Macedonian up the arse and got sent off, I think it’s a bit early to say he’s reformed.  Also, I’ve just had to explain to my 8 year old son what racism is all about courtesy of him asking “What did John Terry do?”.  As I was trying to explain it and fielding questions like “what did he say?”, I was thinking “Thanks John you great role model”.  The prospect of Rooney and his prostitute bothering and red mist which really wasn’t that long ago, is not something I want to have to entertain explaining to my kids if he’s England captain.   Anyhow, back to the football and his 2 goals against the pub team put him in the top 5 English international goalscorers of all time list.  Let’s scratch the surface a bit.

31 international goals and for the sake of analysis, I’ve grouped the countries he’s scored against into one of 4 groups.  Group 1 is your traditional football powers who have a chance of winning tournaments (where England aspire to be), Group 2 is your countries who are dangerous on their day (England’s level), Group 3 is the average sides who occasionally qualify for tournaments but aren’t much good and Group 4 is the pub teams who are basically League 2 standard and should have to pre-qualify for qualifying groups.

Rooney v Group 1 – 2 goals in friendlies v Argentina (2005) and Holland (2006)

Rooney v Group 2 – 5 goals v Croatia (4) and Russia (1)

Rooney v Group 3 – 11 goals v Macedonia, Denmark(2), Switzerland (2), Slovakia(2), Bulgaria(2), Ukraine, Poland

Rooney v Group 4 – 13 goals v San Marino(2), Andorra(2), Belarus(2), Kazakhstan(3), Iceland(2), Liecetenstein and Estonia.

So, he hardly ever scores against decent sides and he hasn’t done it in a tournament when the pressure is on, since 2004.  Somehow, this makes him undroppable.  Though I’ve used stats here to illustrate a point, they of course can be used to illustrate just about any point you like.  Trust me though that he’s played against Italy, Portugal and other countries who you’d put in Group 1 and done nothing.  If we’re going to play 2 up front for England then Carroll and Defoe would be a better partnership than Rooney and anyone else.  Pick the best team, even if it means leaving out who you think is your best player.  It also might give him the jolt he clearly needs to get him back to his best as he’s a million miles from that now.  He’s so mollycoddled it’s untrue – we change winning sides to accommodate him, we pick him for tournament squads when he’s suspended and countless England managers pin their colours to his mast and he never does a thing to justify the faith put in him.  The answer might be to stop putting faith in him for a bit and make him work at impressing people again.  We’ll qualify for the World Cup if Rooney plays or if he doesn’t.  Lets try the latter option for a bit and see if there’s a long term benefit.  He can be a good player but right now, for England he just isn’t.

With Roy Hodgson, we are following the same road as always – qualify because the opposition are poor and fail in the tournament because we are poor when the opposition are a bit better.  I was slightly encouraged by Euro 2012 as my blogs illustrated but It’s been a really really disappointing start to the qualifying group for Rio 2014 in terms of progress in our way of playing and it needs to improve or else you begin to wonder what the point is.  In my opinion, if performances don’t improve and the negative thinking is not abandoned, Roy Hodgson needs to go.  I know a point in Poland is not the worst result ever but we aren’t improving and this has to change.   Can we ever trust the FA to get something right though?  To be honest,  I wouldn’t trust the FA to sit the right way round on a toilet so I don’t expect them to get this right either.  We’ll limp on, we’ll qualify and then we’ll be crap and come home.