28 replies to this topic

[Hutch]

England team to face Montenegro:
Joe Hart, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Joleon Lescott, Glen Johnson   
Gareth Barry, Adam Johnson, Steven Gerrard, Peter Crouch, Wayne Rooney, Ashley Young

Subs:
Ben Foster, Stephen Warnock, Gary Cahill, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Stewart Downing, Jack Wilshere, Kevin Davies

[ethicalstrategy]

What a dreary first half.

Good to see the Gerrard/Barry partnership being so effective. Gerrard playing quarterback and trying to spray long balls to no-one in particular.

Rooney is pants too.

[Hutch]

Not a good night for the home nations so far. Northern Ireland could only manage a 1-1 draw with the Faroe Islands, Scotland going in a goal down at half time to Spain, and Wales 2-1 down in Switzerland.

As for England, 0-0 at half time, they've created very little. Ashley Young seems to be forever taking the wrong option. Maybe I'm a little prejudiced, but it looked to me as if he'd rather make a run himself, ending either in a shot off target or a misplaced cross, than play the more dangerous ball to Ashley Cole who had been making good forward runs but found himself being largely ignored.

[Scooby Blue]

ethicalstrategy, on 12 October 2010 - 07:55 PM, said:

What a dreary first half.

Good to see the Gerrard/Barry partnership being so effective. Gerrard playing quarterback and trying to spray long balls to no-one in particular.

Rooney is pants too.

Ah but he'll win us The World Cup/ European Championships don't you know. Well supposedly, allegedly, apparently. Oh and single handedly aswell with a bit of help from Saint starfish.

[Englishman]

What garbage. At least Frank and JT can't be blamed for this one.

[Backbiter]

How weird. Even without the usual scapegoats (JT, Lamps and Heskey) England remain useless.

Glen Johnson gets worse ever time I watch him. He is laughably bad.

EDIT: Kevin Davies. What can you say?

Edited by Backbiter, 12 October 2010 - 09:09 PM.

[Eggy McMuffin]

When SWP came on, I knew the game was over.

[Hutch]

It was no surprise to see Ashley Young go off, and even less of a surprise that Capello bottled out of taking Rooney off.

[Gem]

10 muppets & the world's greatest left back.

Glad I didn't watch this joke, glad to hear Rooney was sh*te as usual.

[The Brit]

as mentioned by others before, my first reaction on hearing the back end of the game on radio five was who are the dimwits going to blame with frank and jt not there...could stevie me actually get a bit of criticism?
anyone who wonders what's wrong with the national team -  just take a look at glen johnson and wright-phillips still playing in an england shirt

Edited by The Brit, 12 October 2010 - 10:12 PM.

[Liam]

Off topic but Ireland got a decent draw against Slovakia tonight.

And that's with Paul Green in midfield. A guy whose second touch is a tackle.

[The Brit]

taped the coverage on itv and just seen the most bizarre naming of the team before kick off I have ever seen...they filmed each player having a polaroid picture done, signing it at the bottom and then they placed it on a tactics board in their respective positions...you could tell the players were thinking what the fcuk?

ITV...truly terrible

[Spiller86]

Had a look at this one and my first response is: Who said England are better off without Lampard in midfield. Plenty of people  were claiming as much recently, and they look quite the fools now.

I've said it before and I'll say it again Gareth Barry is the most overrated player going around, Capello should be sacked just for thinking that he is half decent. Possibly the worst thing about Owen Hargreaves injury was that this guy has gotten as many caps as he has. That said this wasn't the best night for midfielders as Montenegro did their best to stifle the space. With Vucinic and Jovetic not playing they really just tried to shut England down, nothing more.

Quite honestly I thought Kevin Davies did ok. He was a hell of a lot more effective than Crouch, and set up Rooney with a great header, which of course he wasted as is his current theme.

I'm not sure how much longer Capello is honestly tenable. For a guy with a record as good as it is, he just seems clueless on how to take on teams who sit in and close the space. I mean his answer tonight was the long ball to Davies/Crouch. It was the same at Wembley as it was at the World Cup, all the ball, but no penetration.

[G4 Squared]

On the up side Rio looked absolutely sh*t, anyone keeping the ball on the ground should stroll past manure

[german-blue]

Is there any reason why Davies gets prefered over Bent?

[ethicalstrategy]

german-blue, on 13 October 2010 - 05:56 AM, said:

Is there any reason why Davies gets prefered over Bent?

Bent was injured, otherwise he would have started ahead of Crouch.

[ethicalstrategy]

The Brit, on 12 October 2010 - 10:09 PM, said:

...could stevie me actually get a bit of criticism?

Not from the aptly named Matt "Dicko" Dickinson in the Times today.  Apparently Gerrard ran the show and was worthy of a top mark 7.  

[Nibs]

ethicalstrategy, on 13 October 2010 - 06:37 AM, said:

Not from the aptly named Matt "Dicko" Dickinson in the Times today.  Apparently Gerrard ran the show and was worthy of a top mark 7.  

England were shocking last night - it really was very poor. But ES think you need to put your anti Gerrard bias to one side (I know it's hard with you being such a huge fan of our Frank!!).

After Adam Johnson, I would say Gerrard was the only other England player who looked any good. Not saying he was brilliant, but he did make things happen and I would say a 7 is pretty fair (with Johnson getting a 7.5).

The rest were not worthy of a mark really. Rooney doesn't look good enough to get in a Championship side at the moment let alone be Englands saviour. The bloke is going downhill faster than Franz Klammer used to.

We need to get rid of Capello now - the guy is a joke, especially in his post match interviews which everyone walks away from scratching their heads wondering what the f**k the bloke is talking about?
We need a new coach who will have the balls to drop the old established players who fail time after time and blood some fresh players like Wilshere & co who are actually comfortable on the ball and who can make things happen as opposed to players like Gareth Barry and SWP who shouldn't be within 100 miles of an international football match.

Edited by Nibs, 13 October 2010 - 06:49 AM.

[dkw]

Well that was a complete waste of 2 hours wasnt it, what an atrocious, spineless effort. I wonder if the people clamoring for the much exalted Gerrard/Barry midfield are still sure of it? Barry was so bad last night it was actually embarrassing watching him, I can barely remember a single pass he made that went to an England player. He looked so slow too, his lack of pace is ridiculous. Glenn Johnson is as much a RB as I am a cathedral, anyone with any slight amount of pace or talent can go past him with ease, thats when he bothers to turn up at RB anyway, he`s like a 5 year old the way he follows the ball. Gerrard did exactly what he did in the world cup, a superb first 10 minutes followed by 80 minutes of randomly booting the ball upfield to an isolated player instead of trying to play around or through them. It might look good but accomplishes very little. The only 2 players to come out of that game with and credit were Adam Johnson (though he faded in the 2nd half also) and I thought Ash did ok, though his crossing was pretty rubbish. I cant wait to see how people manage to blame Terry and Lampard for this one though. Oh and Andy Townsend watches a different game to everyone else, Young didnt dive apparently he was getting out of the way of a challenge. Go figure.

[german-blue]

ethicalstrategy, on 13 October 2010 - 06:33 AM, said:

Bent was injured, otherwise he would have started ahead of Crouch.

ah ok....