England ‘played’ Croatia last night and I use the word played loosely. It was really football but more like 11 men running around with the ball occasionally hitting them. For the record we lost 2-0. This ended a bad week for England after a poor performance against Macedonia (0-0) – however that performance was amazing if compared to the shambles from last night.
Croatia are playing well recently and actually won something like 7-0 in their last game. It doesnt help then that the manager for some reason decides to play some untried formation. Changing system to 3-5-2. Quite a negative formation and also none of the players play it in their club side. To make things worse we actually we played more like 5-3-2 (or maybe even 7-1-2!!) We just dont have the players to play that formation – Gary Neville is a great defender but no wing-back. On MOTD, Alan Hansen said that vast majority of players he has talked to dont like playing with 3 centre backs. If they are not used to playing it quite often a couple players go for the same ball and sometimes no player at all.
As proof on how bad we were we had 2 shots in the game – the first one in the 91st minute!!
Air shot
Everyone will remember about Robinson’s air kick. He made some good saves and actually kept us in the game. Arguably our best player – certainly in the first half. However he was a bit at fault to the first goal being too far off line. Leading up to the first goal he actually could have caught the ball but decided to punch it. The second goal wasnt his fault – its one of those things. However when you are playing badly it all seems to go wrong for you. The ball hit a divet and bounced over his foot and he kicked air. By this point it was so bad you just had to laugh!
It doesnt help that our best player is not playing well – Rooney was abit better but still not his usual self – he was properly the best of the worse.
We are missing Owen really – we dont have an out and out striker with pace. Rooney always drops back and Crouch doesnt play that far forward and doesnt make many forward runs behind the defenders. Made abit of difference when Defoe came on stretching the Croatia defence
Bring back Beckham!!!
I think we need Becks back. I am not the only one who thinks so – the England fans were singing “‘One David Beckham” at the end of the game.
McClaren’s advisor Max Clifford has said about McClaren dropping Becks from the squad “What it did was stamp his authority and say ‘I’m not Sven’s assistant, I’m my own man’,”.
Is he saying what a lot of us were thinking – McClaren didn’t drop Becks because he was not good enough for the squad but to (try) and proof he was not just Sven Mk II.
Related links:
BBC Pundits verdict