I think it is time to discard the old brigade - and that starts with SGE. He has turned us into an incompetent Italian team. At least when we used to lose on penalties we could go out with some pride having given a good account of ourselves. In 2002 I was willing to put the Brazil debacle down to inexperience but not now. We have learnt nothing from the last world cup. The hurt of defeat didnt even properly register with me because quite frankly we did not deserve to advance. The midfield were clueless. Gerrard has perfromed nothing like he has for Liverpool in this tournament. Lampard was slightly better but when it counted (ie against the big boys Portugal and France) he went missing. Beckham is either unfit, unmotivated or both. Either he gets back to the player he was 2 years ago or he goes. Scholes days are numbered. We need to find a winger, Wright-Phillips for example. John Terry completly exposed himself as inadequate during the tournament. Ledley King should be given priority over him as cover for Rio in future. he deserves it after the France game. Ashley Cole finally showed me why he gets in the Arsenal team week in week out. He was one of the pluses for us. Campbell is still getting better. For a couple of yeras I have regarded Judas as one of the worlds best centre backs - prehaps now he is the best. Neville has one more tournament left in him. Rooney is goona be big no doubt. I expect he will almost single handidly carry our hopes in Germany in two years time. Whether Owen will still be there remains to be seen. I believe Defoe will be our number one target man by then. Ring the changes now. We have made no progress in the last two years. We have stagnated under Sven
As soon as we scored early against portugal I thought it was going to be a bad thing. We just sat back and defended all game and created nothing. There is a difference between playing defensively and then hitting the opposistion on the break, or just playing crap football, England did the latter. We could not pass or retain possesion yet again, how many times are we going to do this? I admit that sometimes your going to have to just sit back (Turkey away for example) and scrape through the odd game in the tournament, but when this seems to happening most games then we have problems. Now looking back at the competition it really shows that we need a decent left sided midfielder, who exactly?, I don't know but Scholes or Gerrard are not the answer. I think Lampard had a quite good tourney but even though he got 3 goals he didn't really play great in any of the games and still gives away possesion too much, as for Beckham? well, I don't know whats been wrong with him but I hope its not permanent! One plus point is that we have a rock solid defence (aside from some set peices) that serves as a good base for out team. On paper we have a great midfield although they have yet to perform to their potential and with Rooney and Owen up front we have an exciting attack. Lets just hope we can iron out the problems for the world cup in Germany 2006 and really live up to the hype.
Yeah scoring first was the worst thing that could have happened to us. It's no coincidence that our best performance came in the only game we went 1-0 down in. As soon as we went behind against Portugal we stepped it up immediatley and scored minutes later. What does that tell you.... The fact is we are wasted under Sven. His tactics do not get the best out of our players. He spent too long coaching in Serie A. Sod knows who we should replace him with though