no creativity

[gbspur72]

Half time in the England game. If this is our starting 11 we are in trouble.
This game is crying out for Lennon and Carrick.:(

[highlander]

the game was very slow and boring. Owen & Walcott had a collective 4 seconds of ball time and its beyond me why Walcott is in the squad

[GOONHATER]

Highlander, The Walcott Thing Is Beyond Me! How The Guy Can Get Into This England Squad Is Amazing,he Is An Average Player With Speed! But He Did Nothing To Tell Me He Is The New Rooney Or Pele At 17yrs Old.this Seems To Smack Of A Pc Brigade Upper Management Wrong Doing To Get The Youngest Black Payer On The Pitch To Me! Or Am I Being To Supicious, that there is a david dien element riding through the england camp?

[Spur]

No no your right. Walcott is made now. Easy they will get back their money. He will probably get a much bigger sponsorship deal from this and Arsenal will take a nice slice. Dein got the kid made. Sven just looks like a mug again.

[GOONHATER]

I'M GLAD THAT SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME, I THOUGHT IS WAS THE RAMBLINGS OF A DRUNK!:o

[mjbmedia]

he was running around like a lost chicken, he couldnt even remember to hold onto his first England shirt the dumb feck

[whistler9027]

the sad thing is even if the kid walcott is an above average talent with real potential...we aint gonna see it yet...championship footy is a different world from the top of the game..he's already found he has problems using his speed ,with lack of space he gets at this level.Lennon copes well because hes got the experience of the premiership and he's got quick feet and can turn and explode from a standing start..I know the dein influence smacks of a conspiracy theory..but why else is he in the squad?...Walcott is becoming a gimmick..and this experience could set him back ...Ars anal don't care cos he'll b worth more as an international.Leaving Carrick out was a joke..Carraghers a great defender but hasn't the passing range to start a counter attack...ok we won..and we deserved to ..but Hungary were pretty ordinary with no threat up front.
We've got the players but a management team without a clue....

[marcusto]

As for Walcott its a marketing thing... its gotta be... but I willing to give him a chance

Cara as defensive midfielder doesn't work......... extremly good defender... but surely Carrick has to play that role if your gonna have defensive midfielder... even Alan Hansen said the same....

I can see it now
Carrick playing a cracking ball from the half way line through to StevieG to score the winner in the final! or Lennon in the last 5 minutes breaking down the right beating 2 defenders and putting a decent cross 4 Owen to put in

[Hayes Massive]

well either sven tells lies or we are in trouble.
this according to him before the game was our starting 11,after the game perhaps not.I now know that sven does not know his starting 11 in the world cup after 4 years ,goodness knows how many players & 3 & a half years of 4 4 2 becoming 4 1 4 1 becoming 4 1 3 1 1 becoming anything he thinks of at any particular time.I think we need to understand that he has not been corageous in his selections he has been foolish.Carragher is a superb defender NOT a holding midfielder,Gerrard is superb attacking midfielder NOT a forward,& worst of all Theo Walcott may be a potentially very good footballer the 4th forward in a World Cup Squad he is not {he is literally running around not sure where he is meant to be}.As for Hargreaves i dont even want to go there.
I want England to have the best chance possible of winning the world cup that means we put our best team on the pitch with everyone in the position for which they have been selcted not asked at the last minuite to do things they werent selected for.
Finally i 10 days before we kick off do not know what our starting formation will be let alone the starting 11.I hope Sven does although i have my doubts.

End of rant but hey the flag is out & hopefully everything i have said is total bollocks & the World Cup is coming home.

[DonJolSpurano]

well either sven tells lies or we are in trouble.
this according to him before the game was our starting 11,after the game perhaps not.I now know that sven does not know his starting 11 in the world cup after 4 years ,goodness knows how many players & 3 & a half years of 4 4 2 becoming 4 1 4 1 becoming 4 1 3 1 1 becoming anything he thinks of at any particular time.I think we need to understand that he has not been corageous in his selections he has been foolish.Carragher is a superb defender NOT a holding midfielder,Gerrard is superb attacking midfielder NOT a forward,& worst of all Theo Walcott may be a potentially very good footballer the 4th forward in a World Cup Squad he is not {he is literally running around not sure where he is meant to be}.As for Hargreaves i dont even want to go there.
I want England to have the best chance possible of winning the world cup that means we put our best team on the pitch with everyone in the position for which they have been selcted not asked at the last minuite to do things they werent selected for.
Finally i 10 days before we kick off do not know what our starting formation will be let alone the starting 11.I hope Sven does although i have my doubts.

End of rant but hey the flag is out & hopefully everything i have said is total bollocks & the World Cup is coming home.

you're right, Sven apparently doesnt knw what he is doing. it doesnt help that he is tactically very very one-dimensional and naive. i though david pleat or graham taylor were in charge last night, the sight of our forwards all back for corners brought back terrible memories of that tactical dinosaur.

it is my opinion that teams should be built on focal points and the rest of the team should be flexible around those focal points. these focal points basically translate to a formations spine. all the top teams have them. one or two KEY players in each department whom the others play off. at spurs we have king/dawson at the back, carrick in midfield and keane upfront. the rest of the 11 players are pretty flexible around those meaning our formation is switches thru 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and even 3-5-2. it helps that we have players (mostly) that can play this way.

chelsea (terry, makalele, lampard, drogba), liverpool (carragher, alonso, gerrard, crouch), arsenal (toure, gilberto, henry) and man utd (ferdinand, rooney, RvN) all follow this pattern. the 98 and 2000 french team did. brazil always have done.

england dont do this. they are too rigid.

at the back you have terry and rio and sadly terry has to compensate for rio. however, we have two excellent fullbacks. however, in midfield we lose all shape and balance and thats why sven thinks a 'holding' player will work.

whats our best midfield?

everyone knws who our best midfielders are, but sadly they dont fit into a flexible system that gets the best out of each player as an individual and as part of the team. our midfielders dont play as a team unit and lampard and gerrard both sacrifice aspects of their game when playing together.

if you play 4 you need a central man to sit, another to attack and two fast wide men who can cross and run at fullbacks and get the ball behind the opposition defense or come inside and create space for overlapping fullbacks.
beckham cant do this 9except the crossing). gerrard and lampard are two of europes best central attacking midfielders, but they cant play in one position. joe cole is excellent and fits the bill on the left but who will sit. using those four, the obvious answer is for beckham to sit, with lamps centre and gerrard wide right. this gives us the flexibility ive talked about...but has it ever been tried? NO!

the only time beckham did play the 'holding' role we strung out another four men in front of him and neutralised rooneys role by putting him out left. again, we lost a focal point.

up front we are ok but have lost rooney, our attacking focal point whom our wide men and owen should play off. the simple answer is swap him man-4-man with crouch or defoe, or maybe joe cole.

to me, and im no fifpro coach, the solution to overcome rooneys loss is to play 4-3-3 with lennon and joe cole out wide. owen is now the attacking focal point and in midfield we have beckham as the 'holding' focal point and lamps and gerrard playing off him. or 4-4-2, with gerrard out on the right and lennon swapped for crouch, becks and now crouch are the 'focals'.

keep it simple sven and give the players freedom to play their natural game.

[shoot_ffs]

the problem i have with last night is if you have to play the holding midfielder, play the right one for the opposition. I know the players do need to bed in, but it was hungary for christ sake, it was perfect for carrick. We didn't need someone to chop and spoil as they were bloody awful. Then if you have argentina or brazil then maybe play carragher in there for his tackling. I can see why he didn't want to play lennon, he wants walcott to play witht he other first teamers in case owen or crouch gets injured. I don't agree with it but i can understand it. Sven knows what lennon will do and he's nailed on to play in the world cup. Unfortunately the other strikers haven't played much with lennon so i think any benefit from his wing play may be lost. It's a farce in my opinion.

[Danishspurs]

Erricson is affraid that if he play Lennon everybody will discover how much better he's then his loverboy Beckham... okay england scored two goals from his freekicks but other could put them in too, and he's not a winger and that want england needs...

[highlander]

we dont need a holding player all of the time for example only when playing against a team who have someone roaming behind the strikers such as Riquelme for the Argie's or Totti for the Italians. in the group stages keep it simple with 4-4-2 of;

robbo
neville, rio, terry, cole
becks, stevie G, lampers, cole
crouch, owen

my first choice for the holding player would be ledders but as he is apparently still injured it will have to be Carrick in a 4-1-3-1-1 of;

robbo
neville, rio, terry, cole
..........carrick..........
becks, lampard, cole
..........gerrard.........
.....owen/crouch......