1150
by simmo_Archive
Last night was a fitting and just end to the whole campaign. Discounting the dismal performance for a moment, everything else was simply perfect. The pissing rain, the sodden, sorry-looking players, the atrocious pitch. Rarely has the pathetic fallacy been used so crudely and yet to such devastating effect. McClaren under his fucking umbrella. Everyone else getting soaked through and covered in shit, whilst he stays clean and dry and lifeless. How can anyone put their faith in a manager who, when his side are two goals down after fourteen minutes and about to crash out of the European Championships, doesn't come out from under the sanctuary of shelter and put his arse on the line? He should have been out there on the touchline, screaming instructions and encouragement to his players, motivating them.
As for the performance - dire. Abysmal. The entire tactical plan appears to have been as follows: hit long ball after long ball after long ball to Crouch, and hope we don't lose. It was painful to watch. The lack of industry, of ingenuity was painfully apparent and revelatory from the first kick of the game.
There's no point in blaming Carson for anything. So he fucked up - keepers do, especially when twenty two years old and placed untested in to vital games in front of 90,000 people. He wasn't the worst player in the team anyhow. And even the "bright young lights", who've previously played with some courage and passion and promise - Micah Richards or Wright-Phillips, for example - were terrible. Absolute shite.
England haven't got the best squad in the world. A smattering of world class players, and some solid if unspectacular stock players to back them up. A serious lack of a decent strike force, no doubt. But then Croatia don't have the best squad in the world, nor Poland or Greece or the Czech Republic or Romania or Ukraine or Sweden or Scotland - Scotland! Yet they manage to play decent enough football and experience decent enough success. I'd be happy just to see an England side playing well enough and with conviction and tactical know-how. i.e. an England team managed by someone who could take this reasonable squad and make them perform to the best of their abilities, with confidence and intelligence. I'm not asking for genius or world cups - just to be able to feel that the team tried and that the manager had some idea what he was doing....
Fuck McClaren. Not even for being a shit manager (which he is). But for being a smug, post-New Labour, shameless, unctuous git. After the game in Israel, for example, why did you not just put your hand up and say "we were shit and it wasn't good enough. we need to address that."
Anyway, new manager, new manager....
Well, for a start, does the job look very appealing to anyone? It's clear that the whole team, system and ethos needs rebuilding pretty much from scratch. That, and your first competitive game won't be for a year. But maybe someone half-decent can be persuaded.
Give that neither Ferguson nor Wenger are likely to want to give up their respective title challenges with two sides playing beautiful football in their prime and take over a flailing, bloated national side with the strange combination of neither self-confidence or humility, then I guess the next best choice is Mourhino. He might be a twat, but at least he is brave and will put his arse on the line every time. I bet you he wouldn't have been hiding under his umbrella last night. Someone who'll get angry. Someone with passion and desire. Someone who hasn't gone to some kind of PR finishing school.
Please God, let them sack this chump.... I have this horrible feeling he's going to be given another chance.
Rick Reuben wrote:daniel robert chapman wrote:I think he's gone to bed, Rick.
He went to bed about a decade ago, or whenever he sold his soul to the bankers and the elites.
