What a match!

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I started the evening in agony as the Netherlands where playing abysmal as usual in the EC qualifying matches. But then England-Croatia!!

What a match. This was an awesome match to witness as a neutral viewer. This match had it all, panic, drama, tension and cliffhangers. Of course I am not entirely a neutral viewer because for some reason Guus Hiddink did it again.

First with South Korea, than Australia and now he does it again with Russia. It's amazing really.

Barmy my sympathies to you of course, but you have to admire (maybe in a few days) the way Croatia dominated england tonight and even kept going on the offensive when 3-2 ahead. Kudos to the Croatia team!

 

Rubbish performance. Croatia were maginificent, Bilic is a good manager...

Playing Carson was a mistake, James has been in decent form, he has the experience and I am pretty positive he wouldn't have let that first goal... Gerrard and Bridge were rubbish. I never want to see Bridge anywhere near the team again.

England could really have used Scholes at 2-2... No English midfielder seemed to be able to keep the ball at all.

We don't deserve to qualify in all honesty. Hopefully now McClown will get his marching orders and we can get someone half decent in.

Well done to the Croats... Think they'll do well, remind me of the Czech side in 04 a little.

Had we given any kind of effort and deserved to qualify even a little bit, I might be shouting and bawling and really angry.. but I just can't bring myself to it. We got exactly what we deserved and need to go back to basics. Although we were missing players, England are just not a good footballing side right now.

 

Meh, enjoy it, guys. Once again we messed up in the Euro cup. Of course, the last game was completely unnecessary - no matter what happened Romania qualified and the Netherlands would be second. It was all decided back in September with that loss in Amsterdam, I guess.

 

Steve McClaren's gone. The England players ARE good, they just can't play together as a team, hardly ever have. When I saw James wouldn't be keeper, I was happy to see them lose.

 

Most of the players are not good enough, Takara. They just are not technical and rarely look comfortable on the ball. You watch teams like Argentina, Italy, Portugal, Holland etc. they all have technically superb players. We have a few good players, the rest are distinctly average. When was the last time you saw England pass it up from the back, to the front and really open teams up? I can't remember the last time I saw us string a dozen passes together.

 

That's true but some are good, like James in goal, who can make the odd screw up, Becham used to be, Sean Wright-Phillips. It's why i've given caring about our football team years ago. I only care a lot about our rugby squad.

:edit: I only put Sean in there so I didn't look biased by stiking Sol Campbell in. Pompey fan

 

It's most likely because the lack of english players in the premier league. That sounds strange but the only english player in Arsenal usually warms the bench. 10-11 foreign players in a team is just getting silly.

 

The problem is English players want HUGE amounts, so often it's cheaper for clubs to look abroad.

 

I'd like to just second Barmy's comments about the technical ability of English players. Our inability to keep possession has cost us dearly more times than I can remember, and I think it causes much of the bad play we see. If the decent players like Gerrard, Beckham, Lampard etc. can't trust their team mates to pass the ball accurately or hold the ball up - as the Croatian forwards did consistently very well - they'll just think "**** it" and bomb it forward. This happens all the time. Gerrard is particularly guilty: whenever Owen plays, seemingly every other ball is over the top, intended for Owen to run on to. Of course, Owen isn't that fast any more, and the centre-half can usually pass the ball back to the 'keeper without any pressure. He doesn't do this for Liverpool, for whom he regularly wins games single-handed.

England's inability to play as a team is another, separate issue. This is something that can be attributed to a succession of managers - notice how I hadn't mentioned Maclaren yet - who traditionally picked the best 11 players and then tried to shoehorn them into a formation (usually 4-4-2). Wednesday was a textbook example - rather than focus on the needs of the team as a whole, Mac decided to bottle the difficult Gerrard -vs- Lampard -vs- Barry question and play all of them.

Brilliantly spineless.

The same sense of fear seemed to course through the players the instant Carson made his error. Yes, Tak, James should have played. I'm not just jumping on the hindsight bandwagon here - I was saying it beforehand, but James's reputation for errors always counts against him. Mac was always going to pick Carson, because he could get his excuse in early - the ol' "inexperienced keeper" wheeze. But he was too afraid to play "Calamity" James, because he could read the headlines in his mind and decided that the best player to play in goal, since Robbo's nerves had clearly disintegrated at the thought of another game against Croatia, was an untested youngster. Who needs experience for the most critical game of England's last umpteen years? That thinking carried forward to defence. Mac here was hamstrung by injury, but had he had just a little more foresight in dealing with Carragher - another Liverpool player who pulls up trees for his club - he may have had another, experienced option. Instead, it was Sol and the kids. Campbell was awesome, but a back 4 lacking experience of international competition who hadn't played together were always going to be too porous to get the job done. Selecting another experienced head, who plays with your best centre-half every week, should have been a no-brainer. But then, perhaps we should have some sympathy with Macca here. If you can't find an experienced keeper without a reputation for making errors, what hope do you have?

Croatia aren't world beaters, but they are more than good enough to feed off of the slightest error. After the first goal, England's inability to hold possession - and utter impatience - forced them into conceding again from over-extending themselves in attack. Patience following the goal, allowing themselves to play themselves into the game again, was abandoned. Instead, England felt the need to press forward recklessly. Too much fear. Let yourself get to half-time 1-0 and you're in touching distance. Change things then, don't dig a bigger hole for yourself. But England can't do this - either they're not technically good enough (likely), the players lack the tactical awareness to do this (probable) or they were too afraid of the fans in the stadium and the media on their laptops to stop and think (definitely).

It's this kind of in-bred attitude, a lack of patience, a belief in "heart" over technique at all levels of the game, that most damages England. Those who accused Eriksson of building an underperforming side, "wake up" (as Bilic said). We ain't all that. Until we modernise our attitude to the game and learn to respect technique and build a team over a bunch of over-hyped "star" players, we will continue to be both behind other nations, and keep falling back.

 

Good post Magpie.

It's McClaren's tactical stupidity (it's all I can call it) that frustrates me the most about him. Having seen the Croatian strikers before, he should know that they have a fair bit of pace about them, especially Eduardo. However, he picked 2 of the slowest centre backs in the EPL (one of which is nowhere near Premiership class, nevermind England). This obviously meant that the back line dropped deep all game very conscious of being caught out for speed. This left a massive gap in midfield, as Gerrard and Lampard were told to constantly get forward, so Barry was regularly outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1. The Croat midfielders had so much time and space they must have thought Christmas had come early. If I could see what was happening, why couldn't Mac?

Trying to play Crouch in the Drogba role was stupid as well, as he hasn't the strength to hold the ball up for a good 4 or 5 seconds to allow Cole/SWP to slot down the channels. Crouch is there for flicking the ball on for a strike partner, not on-rushing players. This meant the ball was always too far ahead of Cole/SWP for them to really be affective. The only time they saw the ball was around the half way line, which they then had to carry forward on their own, predictably resulting in giving possession away.

Accommodating Lampard just because it's Lampard is daft. We've been playing quite well with Gerrard and Barry as part of a 4-4-2 formation. Gerrard covers a lot of ground, so can run around Barry as he wishes, whilst Barry does the breaking down of play. Why change a formula that seems to be working? I would have kept the formation as it was before, but just swap out Owen for Defoe or Bent (I don't rate either, but it would have kept our structure).

He Screwed up his selection, but to make it worse he then waited to late to change things. It was evident after 5 minutes that the system wasn't working, and after going two nil down I would have given it 5-10 minutes before altering things. Sigh. I'm just glad he's gone. He's turned us into an embarrassment. For England not to qualify for this competition is ridiculous. I'll be happy with one of Capello, Scolari (my personal choice) or Mourinho.

 

Ta, Barmy.

The problem was you could almost see the thought bubble in MacClaren's brain: "Cole, Lampard and SWP all play for Chelsea. Chelsea play 4-5-1 and are brilliant. It's a tactical masterstroke!" Like you said, Crouch ain't Drogba. The closest we have to that is (frighteningly) Emile Heskey. You need someone there, close to him. On Wednesday his knock-downs only provided clearance practice for the Croatian defenders.

What really rankles, though, is the Gerrard/Lampard brain fart. Why are they incessantly paired up, when it never works? I know that, on paper, they're our best two midfielders. I play them together in FIFA, because that's the way FIFA works - numbers. Real Life operates entirely differently, and in reality they're just too similar in intent to play together. The manager has to decide which of them is best and play him, and use either Barry or Hargreaves in support, breaking up play. The FA need to remember this, and anyone - regardless of reputation - who seems to be so much as considering playing them in midfield should be bitch-slapped out of the job interview, and told to go back to Championship Manager.

 

It could be considered a praise to Croatian manhood . As the article said, it was certainly, hmm, appreciated by the players.

 

Funny that, and now he can do it again for the WC qualifying rounds