Was Steve McClaren that bad?

[Leeds92]

Looking at his managerial & coaching career at club level Mac won something every season he was at Man U (as coach), including the treble in his first season, and was Middlesborough's most successfull manager (he was also the last English Manager to win a cup).

More recently he has FC Twente in second place in Holland, plus a semi in the Dutch cup and a good effort in Europe, which I find quite a good effort considering Holland usually is just a three horse race every season.

At England his record of 9 wins 5 loses and 4 draws, which in terms of % wins was better than Keegan, Venables, Taylor, Revie, Mercer and even Bobby Robson (although Robson had way more games).

This begs the quesiton of the thread. Was Mac really as bad as everyone crucified him as, or was he a victim of lazy players, bad luck or pollitics???

[schafer]

I think it was Ferguson who said that McClaren would be a good manager but perhaps the England job came too early in his career. I think that's probably fair, and just in terms of the type of player he was working with, Boro to England is a massive jump.

I think you also have to consider how good (and underrated) those Croatia and Russia teams that qualified actually were, as they showed (particularly the Russians) at Euro 2008.

I will say though that I'm surprised he's doing so well in Holland. I don't know enough about Twente to say how much credit he gets for that though. My understanding is that they were a side 'on the up' in any case but I could be wrong.

[Prenn]

Are you serious?

[benni...]

Well this seems like the right place to ask this... but what was the big deal aobut McClaren standing out in the rain with an umbrella?

Perhaps England were losing that game, and his demeanor came accross as WTF are you doing? But still its pooring rain, and he;s drinking tea... you dont want your tea to get watered down.

I also assume it has to do with the fact that the players are out there battling, the manager should not be that comfortable on the sidelines or something...

[comme]

At the time nobody realised quite how good those Croatia and Russia teams actually were. People expected us to walk the group because under Sven we had qualified comfortably for the previous two tournaments.

Having said all that we should still have qualified. We had better players than any team in the group and played poorly. If Gerrard had scored that sitter away in Moscow we would have been 2-0 and would surely have qualified from there.

He really should never been appointed. His record with Boro was just not good enough.

[johan neeskens]

I will say though that I'm surprised he's doing so well in Holland. I don't know enough about Twente to say how much credit he gets for that though. My understanding is that they were a side 'on the up' in any case but I could be wrong.

We were and are. McClaren himself says that his biggest achievement at Twente has been that he hasn't changed a thing - I think that's a bit overly modest but probably close to the truth all the same. Twente have continued to play a 4-3-3, for example, I can't remember him ever playing that system with England. All of that said, McClaren does sub well, and with plenty of courage, in Dutch football everybody's amazed that an English manager actually lets a team play a Dutch style of football, and he's very well liked by all at Twente. The players openly comment that they love how enthusiastic he is.

One massve difference I've noticed when compared to his England days is how animated he is during the game. He's screaming, shouting, jumping up and down and even apologised to his players once for getting too excited!

I don't know how this Twente adventure ends for McClaren, but I'm sure that it's helped him improve as a manager. It's always good for a manager to experience a different football culture, might be an idea for some other young English managers too.

[Big Soccer Member]

The difficult/ important games during McClaren's reign were as follows.

- Croatia 2-0 England
- Holland 1 - 1 England
- England 0 - 1 Spain
- Israel 0 - 0 England
- England 1 - 1 Brazil
- England 1 - 2 Germany
- England 3 - 0 Russia
- England 3 - 0 Israel
- Russia 2 - 1 England
- England 2 - 3 Croatia

2 wins out of 10. Terrible.

However, fair play to him to his sucess at Twente.

[Big Soccer Member]

At the time nobody realised quite how good those Croatia and Russia teams actually were. People expected us to walk the group because under Sven we had qualified comfortably for the previous two tournaments.

Having said all that we should still have qualified. We had better players than any team in the group and played poorly. If Gerrard had scored that sitter away in Moscow we would have been 2-0 and would surely have qualified from there.

He really should never been appointed. His record with Boro was just not good enough.
I still refuse to believe that Croatia are that good. Fair play to beating us and Germany in big games recently, but in my humble opinion they don't really have the quality of players to justify even drawing to them, let alone losing. Russia were very underrated though.

We should have qualified though. There wer so many nearly moments such as Gerrard's miss, Macedonia at Old Trafford, Croatia hitting a late winner, Robinson's mistake, ect. We probably did blame McClaren too much, but we would have qualified with someone else, and he was a bad appointment.

Remember when the FA said they would appoint someone before the end of the World Cup. That made them rush into the McClaren decision, when they could have waited another few months for someone better. RAGE!

[lanman]

As England manager, yes.

As a club manager, no.

Outside his last season at Boro, his domestic record was good. Not great, and certainly not good enough for the England job (although there was no English candidate who had a notably better record) but good enough to warrant a step up to a bigger club.

[Teso Dos Bichos]

I still refuse to believe that Croatia are that good. Fair play to beating us and Germany in big games recently, but in my humble opinion they don't really have the quality of players to justify even drawing to them, let alone losing.

As I have said countless times about England it is not about the quality of player but the quality of the team. Croatia, in terms of ball retention, passing and movement, are superior to England. They are a very good unit that play to their strengths. England have not done likewise and are only starting to do so under Capello.

[johan neeskens]

As I have said countless times about England it is not about the quality of player but the quality of the team. Croatia, in terms of ball retention, passing and movement, are superior to England. They are a very good unit that play to their strengths. England have not done likewise and are only starting to do so under Capello.


I agree Teso. The premiership with all of its big stars seems to have blinded the English public and media to the fact that football in general is increasingly about team performance and not about the quality of individual footballers, hence the lack of star players we have now compared to the old days. Football is more and more a team sport. On topic it does make you wonder where McClaren went wrong with England while he's doing so well with Twente. Even long-term Twente fans like me will gladly admit that we've never seen a team spirit that good, we keep on scoring in the last minute for example, and players fight and give the team their all till the very last second (we've won games in the last minute this season umpteen times). So why is it that McClaren can obviously inspire a smallish club in a smallish league and not England? You could argue that he can't inspire big egos and that that's a weakness, but surely the big egos have some responsibility in this. If wearing an England shirt cant inspire you then what on earth can I wonder.

By the way, the Dutch league is of course nowhere near of the level of the English national team, but for an English manager to get respected in the Dutch league is a massive achievement as the Dutch are very arrogant and believe not many people are as tactically expert as them. Consider that Robson was considered a tactical dimwit while Cruyff himself has bigged up McClaren.

[Leeds92]

One thing that I do think he gets a raw deal on is that he did try to give the younger players a go. Perhaps getting rid of Campbell, James, Beckham and co early on was a mistake that cost results however these were players that were at the back end of their career. Im surprised that Beckham is still in the NT and likely to play in the next WC (IMO).

Perhaps he is leaving things at Twente as they are due to the media crucifying him in the England job.

I actually thought (and still do think) that Carson for instance has a future as the England #1. He could not have been worse than Robinson and given the chance to rebuild his confidence he could have gone a long way.
Could Mac have rebuilt this after the Croatia game :confused:

[DenzilTFF]

As England manager, he absolutely was.

[leg_breaker]

Expertimenting with a 3-5-2 in a crucial away qualifier, what was he thinking?

[Big Soccer Member]

One thing that I do think he gets a raw deal on is that he did try to give the younger players a go. Perhaps getting rid of Campbell, James, Beckham and co early on was a mistake that cost results however these were players that were at the back end of their career. Im surprised that Beckham is still in the NT and likely to play in the next WC (IMO).

Perhaps he is leaving things at Twente as they are due to the media crucifying him in the England job.

I actually thought (and still do think) that Carson for instance has a future as the England #1. He could not have been worse than Robinson and given the chance to rebuild his confidence he could have gone a long way.
Could Mac have rebuilt this after the Croatia game :confused:
Scott Carson is a terrible goalkeeper, who shouldn't get near the England squad again. Starting him in a crucial game was one of his very worst decisions.

[DeadAirSpace]

Was Steve McClaren that bad?

For England, when it mattered most, yes he was bad. Home and away to Croatia he got selection and tactics wrong, and that cost England qualification. In a way, he was just Sven with hair (and without the women). When it came to the crunch, McLaren's England were tepid, over cautious and devoid of any spark.

What I will never get is this; there was a period, when England beat Russia 3-0, Israel 3-0 (I think) and there was a confidence and a vibrancy to the team. Where did that go? Did the team that won those games playing good football do it in spite of Shteve? Yes I think so, sadly.

He was made a figurehead of hate after the wembley night of shame. And whilst it was harsh, the whole team were below par that night, he has to take the blame because he picked the wrong players, he failed to motivate and inspire them, and he failed to give them tactical insight at the time they needed it most.

[Leeds92]

Scott Carson is a terrible goalkeeper, who shouldn't get near the England squad again. Starting him in a crucial game was one of his very worst decisions.

I dont agree with you on Carson. He is still very young and has potential to grow. Think of all the mistakes James made at the same age. I believe that he had quite a good season at the time and was worthy of being selected (against the crop of other keepers)

I do agree that he was not the right choice for this game, the occasion was too big and he would not have been ready to meet the pressure. James would have been a better choice (from a small pool of selection)

I think that as I said earlier England needed to blood in new younger players to fill the void and Mac tried to do this. The fact that they now still rely on a 34 year old Beckham to some extent shows a lack of depth in the national team. Also even under Capello I still dont think they are well ahead of where they were under Mac. The loss to Spain recently showed this.

Getting back to Carson quickly, other than James who else have England really got to pick from??? There was talk last year of making Alumina a citizen to get him in goal. That is a concern in itself IMO.

Carson: Too Young
James: Too Old
Robinson: Inconsistant
Foster: Not enough 1st team games

Looking at all of the other top teams in the EPL, all of them have foreign GK's. I cant even think off the top of my head who else could be selected.

[Leeds92]

Was Steve McClaren that bad?

For England, when it mattered most, yes he was bad. Home and away to Croatia he got selection and tactics wrong, and that cost England qualification. In a way, he was just Sven with hair (and without the women). When it came to the crunch, McLaren's England were tepid, over cautious and devoid of any spark.

What I will never get is this; there was a period, when England beat Russia 3-0, Israel 3-0 (I think) and there was a confidence and a vibrancy to the team. Where did that go? Did the team that won those games playing good football do it in spite of Shteve? Yes I think so, sadly.

He was made a figurehead of hate after the wembley night of shame. And whilst it was harsh, the whole team were below par that night, he has to take the blame because he picked the wrong players, he failed to motivate and inspire them, and he failed to give them tactical insight at the time they needed it most.

Could it be possible that maybe the players just choked under the expectation of the night? I think that was the case with Carson although for all of his experience, Bridge had a shocker and Bent missed a sitter.

1st goal an absolute clanger by Carson
2nd goal I would blame a very poor England defence on this one however Carson should have come out a bit more agressively.
3rd goal you could blame Carson however once the defence realised that Croatia would fire in from range shouldnt they have closed them down? After the first goal exposed Carson at range surely the players themselves would realise the need to close this down. It doesnt take the manager to tell them this.

At the end of the day the players all looked s**t scared from the kickoff and the supporters didnt help and get behind them. IMO I dont know whether Mac is to blame for this or not. When you here the opinion of Twente supporters in this thread it appears that he is able to do it at club level

[johan neeskens]

Not every club manager is cut out to manage a national team. Van Gaal is a prime example, in other ways as well. Van Gaal works brilliantly when he has a team of ego-less young players to work with, as evidenced with Ajax (then a team of no-names) in the past and AZ now. He did not handle the Dutch national team or Barcelona well at all by contrast. It could be that McClaren is similar. The Twente squad is made up mostly of talented youngsters who've everything to prove and they all seem to like McClaren and vice versa. But again I think the English may overestimate the role of the manager. He's just one part of a bigger entity, i.e. of a team of support staff. Unfortunately the job of football manager comes with taking full responsibility even if all of your support staff (and indeed your players) have failed.

[nicephoras]

Mclaren's failure in England was mental and was hugely compounded by the pressure he faced. He generally picked the safest lineups so as to avoid criticism, and the one time he tried something new, it was a fatally stupid decision. (3-5-2 for the first time? Really?) He needs to be somewhere out of the spotlight, at least for now. In the future, he may be a viable NT coaching candidate again, but he likely hurt his career by taking on the England job before he was ready for it.
The problem with the England job now is that it almost requires prior success so that "difficult" decisions are tolerated by the fans and the media. Not just for the media's sake, but for the coach as well. Mclaren was clearly unnerved by the pressure, whereas someone like Capello (and to a lesser extent Eriksson) is not - to Capello, if he flames out in England, its not a big deal. He's won everywhere else, repeatedly. You win some, you lose some. But Mclaren didn't have that sort of cachet with the media or, especially, internally. It was an experiment doomed to failure.