sven's obstinacy to field the classic wingers that england has access to is proving to be a detriment to the team's offensive capability. england-spain elucidated england's lack of offensive flow; long balls to owen and/or rooney singlehandedly slaloming through the entire defense simply aren't dependable offensive outlets. With SWP and Downing, England can field two classic touchline-huggers as do most other national sides: e.g. spain, portugal, czech, sweden, ireland, etc. Consider this 4-2-3-1(which of course sven would never consider): -----------------------------Rooney-------------------------------------- Downing---------------------Lampard-----------------------Wright-Phillips ----------------Gerrard---------------------Becks------------------------- Cole----------------Terry-----------------Ferdinand---------------Neville
A few things: Firstly, the Spain game illustrates nothing in terms of our style of play or formation. We could have gone out there with whatever formation we fancied, be it 5-3-2, 4-4-2, 4-3-3 or 0-0-10, it would not have mattered one jot. What caused our loss was our inability to pass to another player only 5 or 6 metres away. Note the 5 or 6 metres - we weren't playing the long ball. We were playing short passes to the opposition. Now, I would presume this is a blip, since I cannot recall a game that poor from us. Your formation is interesting, but is a formation that basically no-one in the England team plays week in week out. They aren't the brightest sparks, bless-em, so I wouldn't want them confused with a totally new formation. In addition, it might (might) work with the personel you list on the wing, but I'm struggling to see who would step into those positions if either was injured. Michael Owen should not be dropped, especially not in that formation. The point of the attack in that system needs to be an out-and-out striker, the role that Van Nistelrooy plays for Holland. Rooney is not that. Beckham should only be playing if he's on the wing, I feel. We have better central midfielders than Beckham. And finally: Campbell and Ferdinand, Campbell and Ferdinand, Campbell and Ferdinand, Campbell and Ferdinand, Campbell and Ferdinand.