Fucking hell it's grim. It's 8 in the morning and I've already been up for two hours working on fixing up about a days' worth of audio recorded on equipment too cheap and crappy to know to leave out it's own mechanical clicking, my stomach's doing backflips trying to expel the quantity of Czech absinthe I misguidedly consumed last night and Fabio Capello's England underwent a complete tactical failure the likes of which we haven't seen since... well, Croatia. It might have only been two games ago but we thought the days of cretinous performances were over when we sacked that ginger imposter pretending to be a competent England manager and replaced him with a bloke that's actually won a thing or two in his time.
The paper says that Capello has only had eight days' training with the England boys since he took over, which isn't really his fault and does go some way to explaining why our bunch of average-at-best headerers and crossers were told to stick to trying to lob it up and over one of the most effective aerial defences in world football, but it doesn't explain how the Italian, who is rightly hailed as one of the best in the game with an impressive CV like his, managed to miss the painfully obvious oppertunity to outstrip France for pace - good in the air they might be, but Lillian Thuram can't move, and William Gallas isn't the fastest center half in the world either. Put Claude Makelele in front of them and you have a defence that could have been ripped to shreds if the likes of Ashley Young, Gabby Agbonlahor, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Theo Walcott had played. Instead we were treated to David Beckham and Joe Cole passing the ball horizontally across the midfield to each other for 45 minutes, and then Stewart Downing and David Bentley doing the same thing while the attacking options of fat Wayne Rooney, terrified Michael Owen and gormless Peter Crouch were forced to drop back almost to the halfway line to get involved in the horizontal pass-fest. Terrible.
Downing and Bentley were probably our best players, which is sad, because they weren't impressive at all - they were just the only ones that actually tried anything ambitious. They both had about four crosses each that were fairly impressive, but were never going to beat a very effective French defence. Even when the oppertunity came to play Walcott (I know he's not very experienced, but he was the only player we had with any sort of speed on him after Agbonlahor, Young and Wright-Phillips were dropped from the provisional squad), we bottled it and stuck on Glen Johnson for Wes Brown instead. Understandable as Brown had been caught out about six times wandering aimlessly towards the opposition area rather than doing any sort of defending, but if you ask me the useless orange wanker shouldn't have been playing in the first place. The sooner Micah Richards comes back the better, and it's a graphic demonstration of the lack of depth in the England side that we are relying on the return of a kid that's barely out of short trousers to give us some strength and steel at full back. Johnson for all his endeavours was better than Brown but still woefully ineffective, and the whole team generally gave off an air of one that was trying so very hard within their set tactics, but were hamstrung by a coach who just bottled it tactically.
There were no bad performances, merely ineffective ones. The fact the strikers couldn't get the ball without coming into midfield wasn't their fault, as there was no-one to connect the players in the middle with the players at the sharp end, just a selection of hopeless diagonal balls. David James had a moment of madness when he decided to try to catch Nicholas Anelka's leg rather than the ball, which was a good foot and a half to the left of him, but we're used to Big Dave having at least one major cockup per year, so we'll forgive him because the alternatives were Paul Robinson and Rob Green, one of whom is a useless Spud shitkicker and the other has let in 12 goals in the 3 games Capello has watched him and so doesn't look like he can handle the pressure of even being considered for England. It's sad because he's a terrific keeper normally, its just you can almost see the terrified trickle of wee running out of his shorts whenever Capello as much as glances in his direction, and the balls just start flying past him.
It should be far from a man who spent the game getting pissed and eating pizza to be able to call a man of Capello's stature tactically naive, but he was. I knew when I saw the lineup and even when I saw who had been dropped from the provisional squad that we weren't going to beat France, because we were trying to play them at their own game - Brazil tried that and lost a World Cup to them, and the boys in yellow could kick our footballing bums all day long and not have to break for tea. We could have managed a draw but for James's annual of madness, but the galling thing is we could have won it if we'd played the better players available to us. Joe Cole might be the Romford Ronaldinho, but he doesn't have the pace to get past some equally skillful but highly ponderous defenders, David Beckham was selected just to get his 100th cap out of the way rather than any genuine footballing reasons, and Michael Owen continues to be scared of the ball when in an England shirt. Still, I suppose it's a good thing that we got Capello's first defeat out of the way sooner rather than later. I'd much rather lose to the French and have the lessons learned there than have the USA beat us when they turn up some time in May or June - I don't think I could stand the gloating if the Apple Pie mob turn us over.
Oh well, onwards and upwards. I've got to go and get up to my elbows in animal crap.
T'riffic.
Goodnight.
The paper says that Capello has only had eight days' training with the England boys since he took over, which isn't really his fault and does go some way to explaining why our bunch of average-at-best headerers and crossers were told to stick to trying to lob it up and over one of the most effective aerial defences in world football, but it doesn't explain how the Italian, who is rightly hailed as one of the best in the game with an impressive CV like his, managed to miss the painfully obvious oppertunity to outstrip France for pace - good in the air they might be, but Lillian Thuram can't move, and William Gallas isn't the fastest center half in the world either. Put Claude Makelele in front of them and you have a defence that could have been ripped to shreds if the likes of Ashley Young, Gabby Agbonlahor, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Theo Walcott had played. Instead we were treated to David Beckham and Joe Cole passing the ball horizontally across the midfield to each other for 45 minutes, and then Stewart Downing and David Bentley doing the same thing while the attacking options of fat Wayne Rooney, terrified Michael Owen and gormless Peter Crouch were forced to drop back almost to the halfway line to get involved in the horizontal pass-fest. Terrible.
Downing and Bentley were probably our best players, which is sad, because they weren't impressive at all - they were just the only ones that actually tried anything ambitious. They both had about four crosses each that were fairly impressive, but were never going to beat a very effective French defence. Even when the oppertunity came to play Walcott (I know he's not very experienced, but he was the only player we had with any sort of speed on him after Agbonlahor, Young and Wright-Phillips were dropped from the provisional squad), we bottled it and stuck on Glen Johnson for Wes Brown instead. Understandable as Brown had been caught out about six times wandering aimlessly towards the opposition area rather than doing any sort of defending, but if you ask me the useless orange wanker shouldn't have been playing in the first place. The sooner Micah Richards comes back the better, and it's a graphic demonstration of the lack of depth in the England side that we are relying on the return of a kid that's barely out of short trousers to give us some strength and steel at full back. Johnson for all his endeavours was better than Brown but still woefully ineffective, and the whole team generally gave off an air of one that was trying so very hard within their set tactics, but were hamstrung by a coach who just bottled it tactically.
There were no bad performances, merely ineffective ones. The fact the strikers couldn't get the ball without coming into midfield wasn't their fault, as there was no-one to connect the players in the middle with the players at the sharp end, just a selection of hopeless diagonal balls. David James had a moment of madness when he decided to try to catch Nicholas Anelka's leg rather than the ball, which was a good foot and a half to the left of him, but we're used to Big Dave having at least one major cockup per year, so we'll forgive him because the alternatives were Paul Robinson and Rob Green, one of whom is a useless Spud shitkicker and the other has let in 12 goals in the 3 games Capello has watched him and so doesn't look like he can handle the pressure of even being considered for England. It's sad because he's a terrific keeper normally, its just you can almost see the terrified trickle of wee running out of his shorts whenever Capello as much as glances in his direction, and the balls just start flying past him.
It should be far from a man who spent the game getting pissed and eating pizza to be able to call a man of Capello's stature tactically naive, but he was. I knew when I saw the lineup and even when I saw who had been dropped from the provisional squad that we weren't going to beat France, because we were trying to play them at their own game - Brazil tried that and lost a World Cup to them, and the boys in yellow could kick our footballing bums all day long and not have to break for tea. We could have managed a draw but for James's annual of madness, but the galling thing is we could have won it if we'd played the better players available to us. Joe Cole might be the Romford Ronaldinho, but he doesn't have the pace to get past some equally skillful but highly ponderous defenders, David Beckham was selected just to get his 100th cap out of the way rather than any genuine footballing reasons, and Michael Owen continues to be scared of the ball when in an England shirt. Still, I suppose it's a good thing that we got Capello's first defeat out of the way sooner rather than later. I'd much rather lose to the French and have the lessons learned there than have the USA beat us when they turn up some time in May or June - I don't think I could stand the gloating if the Apple Pie mob turn us over.
Oh well, onwards and upwards. I've got to go and get up to my elbows in animal crap.
T'riffic.
Goodnight.
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