Oh, England! So much promise, such despicable football. When they weren’t giving the ball away at every opportunity Capello’s managerial decisions killed off any hope of us getting a crucial goal. Here is how England should be managed if they expect to be bringing football home any time soon.
LESSON 1 – MIDFIELD.
Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are two of the finest midfielders England has produced in a long time, but unfortunately one of them must go if England want silverware. Both need a five man midfield to function effectively. Frank Lampard is little more than a striker in disguise, and lacks the passing and holding ability to be a playmaker. He performs well at Chelsea because his club know this, and play narrow with several central midfielders behind him to counteract his weaknessess. Gerrard is the same, he lacks defensive abilities and any real skill at passing. The sole reason Liverpool had such a poor season this year was because Benitez got rid of Xabi Alonso, who was the guy who made up for Gerrard’s shortcomings, leaving him and other players such as Mascherano to fill a role they were not suited for. It is unfortunate, but Gerrard and Lampard are, for all intensive purposes, the same player, and we don’t need two of them.
LESSON 2 – SUBSTITUTES.
When you’ve shown no promise of scoring for over an hour, its time for the manager to start planning ahead and change things up. If this tactic hasn’t worked for an hour, its not going to work now. A straight swap (Lennon for an out-of-form Shaun Wright-Phillips) was completely unhelpful. I would also like to ask Fabio Capello, if he happens to be reading, what Joe Cole has done to upset you. If I turned my television down I could practically hear the entire country yelling “PUT COLE ON!!!!”, why did Fabio completely ignore general opinion that Cole should play and snub him? On top of this, his starting line-up was misplaced. Playing an unfit Carragher over Dawson, who has been in blinding form this season, and snubbing Robert Green, effectively confirming all of the poor man’s thoughts that he is useless after his silly error. All of these things are unacceptable.
LESSON 3 – SEND HESKEY HOME.
In the nicest possible way, get lost.
Heskey, Heskey, Heskey. His Wikipedia article describes him as a “striker”, which I percieve to be some ironic turn of wit, seeing as how he has scored a grand total of 7 goals in 60 games. People continue to make excuses for this washed-up, useless turd by claiming that Rooney “plays better with Heskey than Crouch/Defoe/My nan”. If you want someone to play off Rooney, then put Gerrard in an AMF position and have him serve the same job as Heskey. His performance on Friday only served to prove how redundant he is, making me genuinely chortle when he tried to pull off a stepover before going round a defender, only to perform the first part then lose control of the ball by passing it to the ballboy. Well, thats what it looked like to me anyway.
Well I could certainly go on all week about this so I’ll stop here. I reckon that I might be able to do a decent job of running England. I’ve played my fair share of Football Manager in my time, after all.
