DaveWHU1964 wrote:
Do they though? Or at least do they do it to the degree that the Spanish, the italians, the French, etc do it. Pressure may have been part of it. But so was a lack of basic technique. As was them not caring, or at least not caring nearly as much as their opposition did.
They were failing to do the basics, Rooney couldn't trap the ball or make a 10 yard pass. None of them were moving into space to receive the ball, nothing to do with ability but everything to do with bottling it. Not caring about the game they would be able to do those things in their sleep.
By all means be angry about their lack of bottle and inability to cope with the pressure but claiming they didn't care is just illogical and doesn't fit with what we saw.
bobcar wrote:
By all means be angry about their lack of bottle and inability to cope with the pressure but claiming they didn't care is just illogical and doesn't fit with what we saw.
Unfortunately it sums up the bubble in which English players and managers live in where they feel they don't need to justify their actions to thousands that follow them around the world and the millions watching at home.
I think its called contempt.
As for Peter Crouch saying "players do care".
Really Peter?
Do they care as much as the bloke that spent thousands of pounds getting to France to watch that garbage, whilst they skulk off to Las Vegas on their holidays after having their summer "interrupted" by this pesky tournament, then returning to the comforts of club life picking up their £250k a week?
bobcar wrote:By all means be angry about their lack of bottle and inability to cope with the pressure but claiming they didn't care is just illogical and doesn't fit with what we saw.
BC - I qualified what I said by saying they didn't appear to care as much as the Icelandics. I'll stand by that. Who MOST wanted that game - us of them? I truly wish the answer wasn't such an obvious one.
Peter Crouch claimed on television last night that the players slumped on the pitch at the end of the ground indicated that they cared. I'm not sure about that - it may very well indicate their extreme sorrow at the loss of the money they won't get because they screwed it up (again).
bobcar wrote:That's ridiculous. they obviously cared, if they didn't they would not have played so badly.
Let's just analyse that statement because it seems totally ludicrous to me.
You claim that if the England players DID NOT care about playing for England, they WOULD NOT have played as badly as they did.
Now let's extract the 2 negatives. You have stated that if the England players DID care about playing for England they WOULD have played as badly as they did.
So, to be clear, you're saying that they played that badly because they really think that playing for their county is something they want to do.
Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung calls England's laboured attempts to gain control of the game a "testament to the helplessness of a team of the disillusioned". http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/36650555" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung calls England's laboured attempts to gain control of the game a "testament to the helplessness of a team of the disillusioned". http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/36650555" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Someone on the radio said something similar-
"England swan around thinking they're U2, when in reality they are Shed 7" or words to that affect.
JohnSissonsWasMyHero wrote:
Let's just analyse that statement because it seems totally ludicrous to me.
You claim that if the England players DID NOT care about playing for England, they WOULD NOT have played as badly as they did.
Now let's extract the 2 negatives. You have stated that if the England players DID care about playing for England they WOULD have played as badly as they did.
So, to be clear, you're saying that they played that badly because they really think that playing for their county is something they want to do.
The world has gone mad.
You seem to be suggesting they were deliberately playing badly. That isn't the case there is no reason for them to deliberately play badly, they wouldn't do that for a friendly match behind closed doors let alone such an important match with the world watching. Do you seriously think they turned up for the match and thought "I don't care about this match today so I'll play badly"?
No they played badly because the pressure got to them and the pressure got to them because they cared about the result. When the pressure hits it can cause what happened to the England players in that they can't do the basic things and they stop running into space etc in case they make a mistake, in short they bottled it which is extremely bad for professional footballers but is totally different from not caring.
There are no leaders in that England team to grab them by the scruff of the neck and get them going, they also had no well drilled system to fall back on. Any future England manager has to sort out both those things (the first may not be possible) before we can even begin to progress.
Now I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but I am beginning to smell a rat.
Woy came with a pre prepared statement. Nobody has asked when he prepared it. Did he arrive in France with it already packed in his bags (along with a contingency speech in which he says how proud he was to have won the tournament with such a talented bunch of players)?
Enough has already been said about the performance which defies belief but in retrospect it has the distinct feel of a team that were demoralised and didn't want to win. The performance of Rooney in particular has me wondering. As captain you would have expected him to display at least a modicum of leadership on the pitch. But there was nothing (reminded me a bit of Upson!).
Now the kicker for me was that everyone knows that when things are not going his way Rooney throws his teddy out the pram and starts charging around like a headless chicken (one earlier poster even feared for this when we went 2-1 down). But again nothing. This, to me, seems to be an indication that he didn't care.
Post match there seemed to be a rumour circulating that Woy had lost the dressing room and Rooney was forced into releasing a statement saying that that was incorrect.
If they were not so vastly wealthy already I would have suspected that they had made a killing betting on the result with some dodgy asian bookmakers. However, I think it more likely that this was pure player power. Woy had lost the dressing room and they were going to make him pay.
We will only find out once they have retired from the game and use the true story of the 2016 Euros to market their autobiography (£25 from all good booksellers).
Can't believe the players would lose to teach Hodgson a lesson, they are the ones who are going to get abused up and down the country during the new season, Hodgson will be tucked away quietly on a beach somewhere, until some idiot TV company give him a job as a pundit
Good article, it is people like the author who should be involved in finding the next manager, they obviously have a clue what is going on and should be listened to (but nothing will change, it never does)
Hodgson had that statement prepared and written before the game. Maybe he had it written before the tournament but he certainly didn't write it in the very short period after the match before he delivered it.
Loser. Total ****ing LOSER.
How can you expect to instil belief and confidence in your team when you doubt yourself to the point of preparing a resignation statement before you are knocked out? A self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. A losers mentality and despite what that twat said in his statement yesterday, the real legacy of Hodgson. A Loser.
You reckon Deschamps has written a little speech just in case? Or Conte? No chance. Because they believe they are going to win. And they believe they can get their team to feel the same way. Winners.
That's who we appoint now. The most confident person we can find. Forget tactical nous, forget someone who has worked with 'a similar group of players'. Go and get someone who makes people confident, who makes them believe they are the best players in the world. Put them in a simple system where nobody is played out of position. Redknapp was the guy we should have got.
Good article, it is people like the author who should be involved in finding the next manager, they obviously have a clue what is going on and should be listened to (but nothing will change, it never does)
Upon reading that article, I was, yet I wasn't shocked all at the same time. Hodgson going on a jolly boating trip down the Seine while his next potential opponents were playing and players taking pot shots at a completely unguarded goal, unsupervised, as a practice session really does take the biscuit. What else did they do, run through rows of used car tyres ? Probably.
fjthegrey wrote:Redknapp was the guy we should have got.
Yup. Took The Front Wheels to a CL semi wasn't it (?) with the simplest of formulas: Modric/Huddlestone long diagonals, Crouch knocking it down for Van der Vaart/Bale/Lennon. Got lads like Crouchy and Lennon believing they were world beaters. A similar approach with England would be absolutely the best we could hope for given our limited talent pool.
Apparantly that's 'tactically naive' though and what you need is a well respected, master coach with international experience....someone like Roy Hodgson.
It seems to me we've been trying to delude ourselves that possession, tiki taka imitation football was the 'winning' blueprint and perhaps more amusingly, we were good enough to successfully implement it.
I can understand the problem we have. We're one of those difficult middle children. We don't really fit in. Smaller nations see us as a massive scalp and set up negatively. Big nations are better at what we've tried to copy. We need to find our own style and it needs to be a fairly physical and buccaneering one in order to set ourselves apart and compete against all nations regardless of size, without having to change it game by game.
fjthegrey wrote:It seems to me we've been trying to delude ourselves that possession, tiki taka imitation football was the 'winning' blueprint and perhaps more amusingly, we were good enough to successfully implement it.
Yes, I think Spain got great joy from that system because of Xavi and Iniesta. I don't see anyone in their squad who can fill their boots. No English player comes close, imo. Having said that, whatever system you play the players must be technically skilled enough to move the ball quickly and to receive the ball under pressure. We are still way behind Spain, Italy and Germany, judging by results in this tournament.
Most teams these days are very fit and press relentlessly. Reverting to our traditional "up-and-at-em"
approach will only get us so far.