Lambert and England Parts 2 and 3

Even Rooney Could Have Scored That!

When I started writing this blog in 2009, International week wasn’t really anything I needed to write about, certainly from a Saints perspective.  I didn’t spend loads of time wondering if Papa Waigo was going to get called up for Senegal or if Paul Wotton was going to discover that one of his great-grandparents were Scottish and therefore transport him straight into their first team.  Marek Saganowski was a full Polish international but he couldn’t get into our team whereas Matt Paterson could.  Yes, International breaks didn’t mean much.

Fast forward four and a bit years and it’s a bit different.  We now have players who are full internationals with Poland, Japan, Croatia, Uruguay, Italy, Northern Ireland and Kenya, in addition to England Under 21 and Under 19 players.  Despite all of the aforementioned, nothing means as much as seeing one of our players step out for England as Sir Rickie did against Moldova at Wembley.  Even after scoring with his first touch on his international debut, there was still no guarantee he’d get picked again and no guarantee he wouldn’t join the likes of David Nugent as a one cap, one goal wonder (but without being a Skate bastard).

To the game against Moldova and he’s starting it, probably due to injuries to others.  Rooney had cut his head open after he headbutted an etch-a-sketch in anger after Colleen got bored with trying to teach him how to use it.  Andy Carroll was still lame after the summer season walking up and down the beach in Blackpool and Daniel Sturridge only appears to be fit in between international fixtures, which will probably continue until Luis Suarez is available again.    On paper the line-up looks good with Walcott and Welbeck joining in with our man from the wings and a first choice midfield 3 of Lampard, Gerrard and Wilshere.  Cleverley and Milner are only on the bench so all looks good and so it proved to be.

Sir Rickie had a chance after 5 minutes which he lashed just wide and then settled into a routine of holding the ball up and feeding it to others.  He wasn’t involved in Gerrard’s 20th minute opener but was Johnny on the spot on the half hour when after a spell of penalty area pinball, Walcott hammered in a shot from the right with the useless keeper flapped across to give Sir Rickie a free header into an empty net from 2 yards... lovely!

It got even lovelier on half time with his fabulous ball over the top which allowed Welbeck to round the keeper and score and lovelier still in the second half when another perfectly weighted pass, this time along the ground, enabled Welbeck to score again.  Things took a kind of surreal turn on 65 minutes when he was substituted to protect him for the Ukraine game as the stupidly harsh booking Welbeck had received for shooting about 0.1 of a second after the whistle had blown, had ruled out yet another striker.  The player who came on for him was James Milner so I stopped concentrating for a bit, waking up only to see Milner half volley an extremely difficult chance over the bar from 3 yards with an open goal and no one marking him.  Still, he’s good when we haven’t got the ball which is why he continually gives it to the opposition.

The media after the game has been on the whole very positive about Sir RIckie but there’s always this undercurrent of ‘he’s not really good enough and it’s only because of injuries to others’.   There’s also a bit of ‘he’ll get found out against decent opposition’ which is a theory that anyone who has a quick look at who he scored against in the Premier League last year will quickly dismiss.   The real issue is that he’s played in the lower leagues and hasn’t had it all on a plate and that he plays for Southampton.  None of this undercurrent of negativity would be present if he’d spent his career as a squad player at a massive club playing about 10 games a season.  

So, for the uninitiated I’ll repeat what I said after the Scotland game – in my biased opinion he’s the best striker we have, end of story.  Others are younger and have more potential (Sturridge and Welbeck) but we are talking about the next year here, not three years time.  Virtually all the candidates are quicker than him but none are as good at all the things that a forward actually needs to be good at.... even media darling Rooney.  In my opinion, Sir Rickie is his equal as a goalscorer, equal on pace, has better touch, has better appreciation of others, better in the air, fitter, less likely to get sent off, more intelligent, less likely to shag a prostitute and less likely to give his kids a stupid name.... not that shagging a prostitute makes you a bad striker on it’s own.  In short, he’s more reliable and better.  Also, it can’t be denied that he’s made a lot of fans like the England team again in two matches because of his personality, unlike Rooney who is one of those who just makes people hate it.  I hope that Roy Hodgson thinks the same and you know what, I actually thought for a second that he was beginning to.  However, we’re still a long way away from an England manager being faced with a choice of a fit Rooney and a fit Sir Rickie for one place in the team and the manager picking the Saints man.  Can you imagine the media with Hodgson if he picked Lambert and then we lost?

Rare Footage of an England Midfielder near Sir Rickie.

So, off to Ukraine for the defining moment of England’s qualifying campaign – Rooney is still injured, Welbeck is suspended and Sturridge is being saved for Liverpool’s game at the weekend (which he should be prevented from playing in, in my opinion).  Sir Rickie will be up front on his own and this time he’ll be really on his own as Welbeck’s replacement is anti-footballer James Milner.

The game as you’ll know was a tedious 0-0 Hodgson England special.  Sir Rickie did well in the first half with his hold up play considering he was up against two massive centre backs on his own.  In the second half, England didn’t get any players around him at all so he was mainly trying to control throat high balls hit from miles away and feed them to players who were thirty yards behind him.  Needless to say, he didn’t shine and nor did anyone else but he did get a flick on a throw in to present Lampard with a chance to nod England a 91st minute winner but he headed wide.

I’ve given Roy Hodgson a bit of breathing space since he brought the Saints man into the squad, purely because it showed an ability to think beyond the usual tried and failed players.  However, in other areas his choices are severely lacking.  We ended the game with Milner, Cleverley and Young on the pitch and all three of those are next to useless.   Milner was being defended by many in the media as being underrated or unappreciated – look, he’s slated because people are realising that he’s just crap.  If he actually played football occasionally instead of hardly making the bench at City, then more people would realise.  In addition, having a severe off day in this match were Walcott, Wilshere and Lampard with Walcott having left his brain in England, Wilshere looking like a player who really doesn’t merit the hype he gets and Lampard looking very off the pace as I guess you’re going to do occasionally when you’re 35.  There has to be an opportunity for Nathaniel Clyne to make the World Cup after witnessing the dreadful Kyle Walker play at right back yesterday in place of the woeful-but-not-quite-as-woeful Glenn Johnson.  Much is made of the lack of English players in the Premier League but there are enough good players to replace some of these clowns and I can’t get round the thinking that Hodgson, like countless England managers before him, just doesn’t make the best of what he has.

Hodgson is so negative it’s untrue.  Yes we got a point and our destiny is in our hands so I guess it’s job done but are we improving?  Are we keeping possession more?  Are we building up play and getting players in and around the striker(s)?  No.  Are we playing the default England Away 4-5-fifty yards-1 formation?  Yes we are.  If we qualify, will anything different happen in the tournament – unlikely I’d say.  His comments after the game pissed me off as well.  I know he was defending a pretty woeful performance so he had to say something but basically he said that we were missing strikers and if we weren’t then we’d have scored, which says that he didn’t think his forwards were good enough.  So Rooney or Sturridge or Welbeck would have done better as the only England player in the Ukraine half would they?  I don’t think so.  Ukraine were average at best and I dare say that if a 37 year old Shevchenko had played instead of that Zozulya bloke up front who was one of the worst forwards I’ve ever seen, then we’d have lost.

What we need is Don Nicola Cortese to do Greg Dyke’s job.   The Don would allow Hodgson to get us to the promised land of the World Cup and then sack him and get in a suitable manager for the tournament.  As for Sir Rickie – well he has to come back to Saints and score some goals.  It sounds like Andy Carroll is injured yet again which should keep him in the England squad for the final qualifiers at home to Montenegro and Poland but he has a great chance of going to Brazil if we get there and no one would be more deserving.