Craven Cottage Newsround

Looking back to Saturday, it seems to me that Coleman essentially placed his hopes on Claus Jensen’s shoulders.

The team he sent out was very defensive. The usual back four, with defensive players Brown, Volz and Bocanegra in front of it, is set up to stop other teams scoring. None of those players can be relied on to contribute to the team in attack. I think it’s the Italians (or the Dutch) who like to think of formations in terms of two units (attacking and defending) rather than three (defence, midfield, attack), so thinking this way we used a 7-3 formation. Picking this team in a home game suggests that the attacking three are expected to do all the damage. McBride tried but was dependent on service that didn’t arrive; Radzinski is in the team to provide this service from a conventional wide-left position, which he did from time to time; Jensen is picked to make all this tick. He had to be the focal point of everything we did.

A team playing like this has to progress as a unit. If the ball is played forward too early the team won’t be able to attack in any numbers, being collectively too far behind the play. This is really what happened, in that balls are punted to McBride who either doesn’t get to them or flicks to whoever he can (nobody), or if we’re lucky he holds it up until someone joins him. What should happen (I think) is that the defensive midfielders take the ball and move it upfield between them. We emphatically don’t build like this, and it’s something that Hargreaves, Ince, Batty, Makalele, Essien, Sissoko, all good defensive midfielders excel at. I think this is the one thing Michael Carrick is outstanding at too, for whatever that’s worth, but that’s the last time I praise him here. Anyway, I believe Diop can do this, and Jimmy Bullard would be very useful here too. It’s not Coleman’s fault that these two are out injured, but he needs to find another way to make things happen.

When we do get into the opposition’s half, the team needs Claus to stand up and be counted. There are only three real attacking players, remember, one out wide and one who needs to be on the end of the ball. So realistically it has to be Claus at this point. He needs to be available to everyone as the attack is built.

Assuming Claus has made himself available, the team must then get him the ball in a usable manner. This means on the floor and to his feet. At this point he’s going to be short of options anyway (McBride and Radz are plans A and B) but with the team set up as it is, this has to be our approach. At any time Claus can unload to the supporting midfielders who can try to do what they can with it, but our best chance of scoring goals relies on Claus getting the ball in positions where he can use it creatively. This is what he is good at, and he must be put in positions to thrive. This isn’t really happening because our midfielders can’t build attacks like that and because Claus isn’t one to make the runs he needs to.

It’s all very easy to sit here and try to sound knowledgable, and I understand that we have serious injury issues. But on reflection it does seem hard to understand how we were expected to put together a challenging and cohesive home performance with that team selection. Yes, I am second-guessing Coleman, no doubt about it. I’m just trying to think things through and work out in my mind how this didn’t work and how it might work in the future.

The answer seems to be that you have to back your back four and two defensive midfielders to keep the opposition quiet. Between them these six ought to be able to get the job done. If Jensen, Radz and Routledge are deemed one luxury too many then get rid of the free man or play John or Helguson, but the defending players in this team are good enough that we can have attacking players in the team. (Routledge works back well, incidentally, I’ve seen him make a number of covering runs that haven’t been needed in the end, but that have shown that he’s got a good head on him). But the team really needs more options when it attacks, I’m convinced of that.

What do you think?

For some time this looked like being the jammiest point of the season, but lady luck is a fickle cow and eventually decided that Wigan had earned her help.

Wigan could have been out of sight at half-time, but someone must have smeared their shooting boots with Fairy liquid. Time and again they had half-decent shooting chances, and most of them ended up in the Hammersmith End. Then they missed a penalty (I thought we did quite well to create a ‘cauldron of hate’ atmosphere for that one) and I’d have put money on us snatching a late and undeserved winner. Nope.

Someone, Glenn Hoddle probably, once said that you concede goals when you make two defensive mistakes in a row. One can be covered you see. We made three I think:

1) Zat Knight’s pass was charged down;
2) Which put the ball in a dangerous area. Ian Pearce allowed Henri Kamara to slip past him;
3) Franck Queudreu’s flying ‘here I come to save the day’ kick missed everything,

and Camara was through. His shot beat Niemi and that was that.

But we were doomed from the start. Coleman, for whom I have great respect, decided that rather than taking the game to Wigan, we should instead act as if we were playing Arsenal away.  So we lined up with a midfield that contained two defenders (Volz and Boca, both of whom were there but not really in the game), one defensive midfielder (Brown, who seemed subdued and then got injured), one ‘free man’ (Claus, who came and went as the mood took him) and one winger (Radz, who was our best player).  Wigan could hardly believe their luck. Niemi had plenty to do all afternoon; Kirkland didn’t.

Nobody played well really, and nobody played that badly. It was all so grey. Until the coque-up Franck had played really nicely, and seemed to be forming a good bond with Radzinski down the left, and they were our main plus points. Then Boa Morte came on, and that was nice, but he couldn’t turn things around, and in the last minute when we were piling on the pressure (relatively speaking anyway) he was jogging up from the halfway line as if on a light morning jog. Bah!!!!! Sorry.

Sigh. It was rubbish really. Well done, Wigan.

Some pictures:

Claus and Moritz plot Wigan’s downfall.

Fulham defending. Again.

The esteemed Mr Poll runs out with Wigan. I would say ‘that’s about right’ but I think he annoyed Wigan fans as much as he annoyed us. Idiot.

These mornings are generally quite cold.  I get the 733 train from Balham to work and owing to a quirk in my nature am always on the platform a good 10 minutes early.   What this means is that even if there’s a force majeure incident or the network goes belly up, I’ll still get my train.  It also means that I freeze my nuts off for ten minutes every damn morning throughout the winter months.

The train journey takes a good hour or so, during which I flit in and out of wakefulness, listen to music and read.  The music very much depends on mood; today I had 1965 by the Afgan Whigs to made me feel alert (on bad days I have to use Rage Against the Machine to do the same), others I can get away with some John Coltrane or something easy on the ears.    I read a lot, and have embarked on a quest to learn all there is to learn about England’s managers.   There are a lot of books on the subject, many of them written by Jimmy Greaves, and they’re invariably interesting.

Joe Lovejoy’s breathless chronicle of Sven’s career is 500+ pages long but was a quick read, and felt like an airport crime novel in that once I’d finished it I didn’t really feel anything.  I learned that Sven was always regarded as tactically excellent by players he managed, and that he really doesn’t lose his temper.  Ever.  He did give Beckham a good deal of preferential treatment too, but had his reasons for this.   He seemed to deal pretty well with the press.   And… he probably didn’t really want the England job after a while.   The message Lovejoy puts across is that Sven really missed the day-to-day aspect of club management and longed to get back to it.   Effectively the FA handcuffed him in with their silly salary offer, which was what they wanted but made for a probably quite unhappy Eriksson.   Reading the book one is reminded of just how low England had sunk pre-Sven, and how quickly he turned things around.   He deserves every credit for this, and if in the end the team misfired when it most mattered, well, at least we were in a position to misfire in important games.  One wonders if Team McLaren will even get us that far.  Time will tell, but I miss Sven and I think history will judge him more kindly than Ian Wright does.

Book two in today’s review is Leo McKinstry’s “Sir Alf”.   I read this because Brian Glanville (no Ramsey fan) described it as ‘excellent’ in some column or other.   He was right, where Lovejoy concerned himself with events and loose opinions, McKinstry gets right under the skin of his subject and describes a complex and interesting man.    The sadness of Ramsey is that he was allowed to drift into old age with little attention from the FA and little interest from the football community that he’d given so much to.   This was partly Ramsey’s fault, he could be shy and a little awkward, but his bitterness seems entirely reasonable given his pathetically meagre FA pension (that followed from a relatively poor salary even after he had won the World Cup).  

Ramsey was a vital bridge between the old amateur FA and the modern professional setup.  When he took over the England teams were still selected by committee and English players were encouraged to train without the ball to make them hungrier for it on match days.   The team was not nearly as good as the FA thought it was, and Ramsey’s work helped to rectify this.   There can be no doubt that he was helped by the 1966 World Cup being played in England, but his team that year still stands out like a beacon relative to the failures that came before and after it.    In 1970 England were probably even better, but a bizarre series of events led to the team’s elimination against Germany in a match that should have been won.  After that things went downhill, culminating in the famous games against Poland that prevented the team from qualifying for the 1974 tournament.  

Through both books run common themes, notably both managers’ understanding of the game and their tactical awareness. But the most important commonality between Sir Alf and Sven is the timing of their departure: too late.  

Next time:  Ron Greenwood and Bobby Robson.

Is Thursday too early to talk about Saturday?  I don’t think so.  

So, Wigan.   They slayed Man City last weekend and will not be short of confidence.   Wigan have played very well at home, but in their last three away matches they’ve lost 2-1 to Blackburn, drawn 2-2 with Everton and lost 1-0 to Portsmouth back when Portsmouth were inpregnable.   So that’s not great but not bad either, and they’ll expect to get a draw off us.  

Emile Heskey has drawn more ire from me than most footballers of his generation, but he’s a good player.  Just because he wasn’t international quality doesn’t mean that he isn’t a good at this level, and he’ll present our dynamic duo (Pearce and Knight) with a big challenge.  Henri Kamara has Dennis Rommedahl’s pace but plays as a central striker.   Sometimes he looks like he’s all turbo-boost and no talent, but the man does get some goals and will also need careful attention.    England U21 full-back Leyton Baines has been getting a lot of press of late, and his runs from deep probably assure Volzy’s place in the team as a minder for Liam on the right side of midfield.  

Other than that I think our squad matches up very favourably with theirs, and this ought to result in a halfway comfortable victory for the whites.  But you never can tell and my sub-conscious-inner-predictamatic does keep flashing “0-0″ in big red letters at me.   But here’s hoping.

In news that has nothing to do with Fulham, the Guardian says that Ipswich’s Jim Magilton would take Titus Bramble back to Portman Road. This is interesting from a number of angles:

One, Bramble left Ipswich as a rough diamond who was expected to eventually follow the sort of career path that Rio Ferdinand has done. As a young player he was a good footballer and physically able, but was prone to making ridiculous mistakes that proved costly to his team. These were a pity because he had a few games where he looked like an England player in waiting. I think he was meant to grow out of these mistakes but it didn’t happen. Newcastle have been unable to turn Bramble’s promise into anything worthwhile.

Which brings us onto point two, that Newcastle have been completely unable to put a solid defence together for as long as I can remember. They’ve had forwards galore in the last few years, but at no point have they stopped and said ‘right, we’ve spent all this money up front but the lads at the back are still messing everything up. Let’s get a defender.’ That’s not true, they spent heavily on France and Juventus’s Alain Boumsong, and also on Bramble, but the point remains that this team has been terrible at the back for ages.

Third, what was once an Ipswich golden generation has petered out quite disappointingly. Consider Bramble, Kieron Dyer, Darren Ambrose, Richard Wright, Matt Holland, Herman Hreidarsson, Kelvin Davis, Marcus Stewart, Tommy Miller and the exception to all this, Darren Bent. Most of that list were very fine footballers at Ipswich, but few have really enjoyed a successful career out of Anglia, or at least the career that might have been expected of them. Dyer was an amazing talent whose career has to rank as being one of the biggest disappointments of his generation. The injuries did for him, of course, but in the cold light of day staying healthy is as important as a good right foot. Ambrose looked like a really good young player, Richard Wright played for England and only lost his way when he left for Arsenal. He had been fantastic at Ipswich, much as Scott Carson is at Charlton now. The rest are slightly different, being at a different stage of their career when they left the club, but each would probably look back at their Ipswich years as being the time when they put together their best work as footballers.  Maybe it works in reverse?   Maybe Titus would be fine back in Ipswich.

None of this has anything to do with Fulham, but it’s another slow news week and this caught my attention.

As noted elsewhere, last Saturday found me at Roots Hall to watch Southend get outclassed by Ipswich.

But more importantly, I was on my own private scouting mission. I was watching Freddy Eastwood, subject of rumours galore before the transfer window, some involving Fulham. Southend’s Chairman has ’slapped’ a hefty (if unknown) pricetag on his centre-forward, and reassured fans that it would take a real Premiership offer to prise Freddy away. So far there have been no such offers, the likes of Birmingham, Sunderland and Wolves being the extent of the interest. But word on the street is that Freddy could go higher than that.

Roots Hall is fantastic, a real old-school lower division ground. We walked through residential streets, down a slope and through the back of the stand. Said stand was packed with good-humoured home supporters, with good views of each end only obstructed by a series of supporting beams along the pitch. There were a series of skimpily dressed young Essex lasses selling something or other inside the ground, and a further dozen of them on the pitch at half time performing a dance routine. I was somewhat bemused, but I realised that we’d spent the half-time period standing, arms-folded, and watching them intently, so I suppose credit where credit’s due. But back to the start… it was a mild early autumn afternoon, with a nip in the air and a hint of rain, and it was perfect for football.

My friend Martin says that Freddy Eastwood’s shots don’t get saved, his shots are all or nothing, struck with great power but not always accurately. So they either break the net or fly wide. And so it proved in the only real chance he got in this match, put clean through on goal the ball came over his right-hand shoulder and he walloped it… just wide. He should’ve scored.

At the time Southend were 1-0 against a far better Ipswich side. Sylvain Legwinski was running the game with the ease of a small boy playing Subbuteo against his pet cat. He made it 2-0 with a controlled volley from 25, showing excellent technique to make the game safe. Ipswich added a sweeping third on the counter-attack moments later, and the game was done. Eastwood looked to his bench, signalled that he was done, and off he went. We later learned that he was suffering from a virus.

So how did he play? Quite well I thought. Clearly athletic, he moved with a grace not often seen on a football field. His touch was good, linking well with teammates who were quick to support him. I half expected him to try to do everything himself, but his play was generally unselfish. Martin spotted that Eastwood dropped deep into the team’s midfield to try to get more involved, which is good and bad. On the one hand Southend were being completely overrun in the middle of the park, so tactically it was a reasonable thing to do; on the other hand the team was only going to be scoring with him high up the park, and he probably ought to have been sitting on the last defender to make something happen. He clearly felt some frustration but acquitted himself quite well in a one-sided match, doubly so if he really was suffering from illness.

It’s always hard to know how players in lower leagues might fare higher up, but clearly someone in the top division will take a punt on him at some point. He has the attributes to succeed, whether he does or not probably depends on where he ends up (e.g. I don’t know how useful a move to Sheffield Utd would be).

Yay. Another point from another tricky game. Sadly CCN staff were in Southend to watch that team play Ipswich Town at Roots Hall, the expectation being that we’d slip into a pub for the Fulham game afterwards. The last bit didn’t happen, but there we go. There’ll be a full post about the Southend match (including a Freddy Eastwood scouting report, seeing as he’s on our radar) when I find our camera lead, but that too is another story.

So yes, 1-1 against the Premiership’s last unbeaten team. Good stuff. Match of the Day showed a fair highlights package and it was exciting to see Volzy get a goal. I’m sure it meant a lot to him; good on ya, Moritz. Liam’s handballing issues continued and the devil is back on Michael Brown’s shoulder, but all in all this is a fine point. Here’s a picture of Franck that I pinched from Yahoo.

As I mentioned, I didn’t see any of the game live. But Mazza from Fulham Independent did, and sent me the following. Enjoy:

It’s Pay per View so it’s George Graham and that blond bloke who looks like a hamster and is very earnest….and dull.

 

“Martin O’Neill… Villa unbeaten…. Martin O’Neill… revival in the West Midlands …. yada yada”.

Tonight’s pointless Sky fact is that if Villa don’t lose it will be a new unbeaten record for Martin O’Neill in the premiership. Hardly surprising really since he used to manage Leicester but we’re (earnestly) informed that O’Neill didn’t know this until Sky told him.

 

What he’s saying, Hammy, is that he doesn’t give a toss either.

 

Kick Off…. It’s one of Sky’s B league “state the bleeding obvious” commentators together with Tony Gale who can at least recognise our players unlike Chris Kamara who once spent ten minutes talking about McBride’s involvement in Dawson’s sending off against Spurs while replay after replay focused on Heidar, Heidar’s shirt, Heidar’s name on the shirt and Heidar’s number.

If you think this is all irrelevant it’s because there’s sod all happening on the pitch. We’re getting in our tackles and looking tight. They’re shifting the ball around but to little effect. And both sides are giving the ball away too much.

 

Brian’s on his own up front with Claus just behind. Moritz and Carlos are giving the defence good protection.

 

5 minutes in and the ball flashes across our penalty area when it should be cleared. Liam is so surprised that it reaches him that he handles it. SHIT. Oh Thank God, the ref hasn’t given it. Obviously unintentional but obviously handball. As is the one five minutes later when a Villa defender does exactly the same thing. Weird.

 

We’re not creating a lot but we’re looking solid. Best performance is from our supporters who are making ten times the noise of the Villa fans. “F**K Chelsea ” comes through loud and clear. Then Davis takes Liam out with a clever pass through to Petrov but Liam gets back and does enough to force Petrov to put the ball behind. That’s in the real world. On Planet Referee, it’s a penalty.

Where’s Juan Pablo Angel (and Edwin) when you need them? It’s Gareth Barry and it’s one nil and I’m SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF.

 

So is Michael Brown obviously, since he elbows Barry shortly afterwards. Cue endless replays and Sky moralising. Not Michael’s finest moment and he’s lucky that Barry doesn’t make a meal of it but Brown’s earned a lot of credit with his recent performances so sod it.

 

Great chance for us as Brian flashes the ball across the six yard box but Claus can’t connect.

 

Just as I’m thinking, I’ll take one nil at half time Liam picks out Radz with a great pass. A little jink - a cross to the space at the far post – goal machine Moritz Volz and it’s one – one. Much leaping around and kissing of the screen. Moritz lives up to his warning that he doesn’t know how to celebrate a goal with an embarrassed slalom before diving to the turf. As his team-mates surround him, it looks they’re searching for someone’s contact lens.

 

The second half won’t live long in memory for sparkling football from either side but it’s a pleasure to watch our new-found resilience. Zat and Ian Pearce are immense. Collins comes on for Brian but still seems to be lacking a little zip. He just needs a goal I think. Chris Sutton comes on for them. “Chelsea Reject” sing our lot before he’s even got on the pitch.

The full backs get the protection they need against quick wingers and Villa’s best chances are from free kicks. Liam Ridgewell tries to take Moritz’s head off with a really bad aerial assault. We have a good little period when you start to dream of a win but Villa put on the pressure in the last few minutes. Claus has a great chance with seconds to go but can’t bend the ball round. Amazed he’s lasted ninety minutes really.

 

Rather like the Watford game, the final whistle brings mixed feelings. Can’t help feeling we could have won that one, but we’ve also done bloody well to get the point.

Top stuff, Mazza, thank you.

And so to Aston Villa.  This isn’t the same Aston Villa that we’ve come to know and ignore over the last few years.  Oh no.  With Martin O’Neill steering the ship they’ve turned from a group of lumpen bleugh footballers into a cohesive and confident unit. 

It just shows that for all the money spent on players, a wise Board would do well to concentrate on finding a real manager with real ability, and spending top whack on getting him to their club.  That so many jobs in football go to the same old names on the basis of their once-handy playing career continues to astound me.  

It really does seem that managers are much like players in terms of talent distribution:  there are very few really bad ones, loads and loads of quite good and functional ones, and a small percentage of genuinely outstanding individuals.  Now, most teams can’t afford the very best, but if Villa can get Martin O’Neill then a number of other teams could have had him too.   And they didn’t. 

Choosing managers must be hard.  Kevin Blackwell seemed to have sorted Leeds United out last year, this year he is no more.   Leeds fans will know more than me, but the firing seemed a bit quick (although once I had 606 on in the bath after listening to a game and the Leeds fans were all very angry with him, so who knows?).  In Norwich Nigel Worthington experienced a bad run that didn’t seem all that bad to me, and boom, quick as an omelette, Delia got rid of him.  

Up in the Premiership there haven’t been any firings yet, but can Ian Dowie’s dismissal be far off if Charlton lose a couple more games?  And what of Alan Pardew, once vilified, then celebrated, then unable to make Javier Maschereno perform as well as Haydn Mullins (not to over-simplify or anything).   Our own Chris Coleman was on the bookies’ hit lists too, but he should be well safe after an encouraging start.

Anyway, the game.  We’ll struggle with the Villa pace, no doubt.  Liam should be ok, but after Franck’s roasting at the hands of Rommedahl there’ll be trouble down our left.  I expect Coleman to give Franck some help from left midfield, so Radzinski’s probably out for this one.   Claus might get a start after his Charlton heroics, which would point to a 4-4-1-1 type setup, McBride now being the clear choice up front.  I have no idea what he’ll do in midfield, I’d play Routledge to try to stretch the game, but he might be rested for more combative options.  It’s a shame Volzy is ill, someone’s going to have to keep an eye on Gareth Barry, and I think he could do a fine job.  All in all this is a game that could end 0-0, and if it does I’d be very happy.

One way or another the subject of Sven has been doing the rounds a little.   Here’s my take:

According to Joe Lovejoy of the Times, Adam Crozier’s selection of Sven was driven by the desire to get a coach with an outstanding CV in every department, not least a track record of success wherever he had been.  England needed a superman.   Crozier and his team identified Sven as the man they wanted, landed him, and expected great things.  We might contrast this with Steve McLaren’s selection:

Track record of success?  Average results with a decent budget at Middlesbrough, team in freefall and general chaos as recently as this January.   McLaren swung that around (and in time someone will write a book telling the inside story: Jimmy-Floyd?  Viduka?) and rode a lottery winner’s luck and Massimo Maccarone’s sense of occasion into a European final.   Before that he had a good reputation at Derby and Man Utd.

Contrast this with Sven.  He won trophies in Sweden, Portugal and Italy, taking unfancied teams to European finals (ok, double standards, McLaren did that too, but in the 80s European competitions were very different to now.) along the way. 

Sven took over an England team that had just lost at home to Germany in the last ever game at Wembley.  The outgoing manager, Kevin Keegan, was a player-friendly and likeable man, but admitted he was out of his depth at the top level.  From then Sven perfected the art of scraping the right points from the right games, and England became very efficient in qualifying well for tournaments.   Lovejoy, in his book “Sven” quotes a former (recent) England player who said “my dad could qualifty us for tournaments, but Sven is paid to win the big games”.  Well there’s a truth here, but it misses the mark slightly.  We didn’t qualify in 1994, and plenty of equally talented teams have missed big tournaments since.   We take this sort of thing for granted, but qualifiers are vital, and Sven was good at them.

So what about the second part of that quote, that Sven was paid to win the big games (and didn’t)?  Guilty, I suppose.  2002 is annoying because in retrospect it was the most open tournament for a long time.   England got through a hellish group, negotiating Argentina, Nigeria and our, bete-noir, Sweden.   Looking back, qualifying in second place didn’t really help (Senegal and then Turkey would have followed, which would have seen us play Brazil in the semis in the evening rather than the midday sun), but it was an achievement to get through (Argentina and Nigeria didn’t).  Denmark were swept aside with understated ease, and then we lost to Brazil after taking the lead and a numerical advantage.   David Seaman got himself lobbed and that was that.  The team wilted in the heat and were powerless to hang on.   These things do happen in football, particularly at the top level where games are decided on the smallest of issues.   I think Sven understood this but a laissez-faire attitude won’t do in England, and he got criticised fairly heavily.

Euro 2004 saw the chance for Sven to flex his muscles with a team that was somewhere near its peak.   I think we’ll look back at this side with a little regret in years to come, I think it’s as good a unit as we’ve fielded for a long time.    It should not be forgotten that Sven played his part in the players’ develpment.  Here’s the team that played France:

James; Neville; King; Campbell; Cole; Beckham; Scholes; Lampard; Gerrard; Owen; Rooney.

That’s a good list, but more importantly, these players were all around their peak, Beckham excepted.  Carlos Quieroz was in charge of Real Madrid that season and said that Beckham’s attitude to training was poor compared to that of Luis Figo, for whatever that’s worth.  Whatever, our captain was not at his best.  Had he been I think this team was good enough to win it all.  

Consider the games.  Against France, at this point the holders of both available major international trophies.   Leading 1-0 Beckham missed a penalty that would have made the game safe.  England lost 2-1 from two late goals, but it should never have come to that and the defeat cannot be blamed on Sven.

Switzerland and Croatia were crushed, Wayne Rooney exploding onto the international scene with gusto, thundering his way through shell-shocked defences.   In the knockouts England led early again, but lost Rooney to injury and never re-grouped.   Sven is blamed here, and perhaps with reason, but (home side) Portugal hit England with a whirlwind of attacking football and better teams than England would have struggled to contain them.   Still, England had a legitimate goal disallowed (the unlucky Sol Campbell), and could easily have triumphed.  Instead a defeat on penalties followed, and that was that.  Greece beat Portugal in the final, but it should have been England.  Sven’s fault?  His biggest crime here was to be unlucky.  8 times in 10 England would have won that game.

Perhaps Sven should have left at this point.  Certainly by the time 2006 came around he seemed jaded, and the players seemed less ebullient on the field.   Somehow the team seemed less fluent, more conservative.  Perhaps Sven had decided that the tournament success that had eluded him was to be found in a more defensive approach.  This might explain why the 2006 version of Sven’s England played as they did.  It might have worked, but the team that huffed and puffed its way to another penalty shoot-out defeat in Germany always seemed to be teetering on the brink of elimination.  The players always said that they’d rise to the occasion soon, but it never happened and a poor series of games will not be looked back on with any fondness. 

This does reflect on Sven, I think.   By now the press had thrown the kitchen sink at him, not least for his off-pitch life that was nothing excessive by today’s public-figure standards, but equally, a red-rag to the press bull, all things considered.

Where does this leave us?  A manager who took an average team and made them good, but was not able (through a variety of factors) to turn this into tangible success.    We must remember that all England managers seem to outstay their welcome, the vilification of Sir Alf Ramsey towards the end of his reign being a prime example.  Sir Alf had even won the World Cup, but times change and the press wanted a new man.  They got Don Revie then Joe Mercer, and England failed to qualify for the 1978 World Cup.  After that Ron Greenwood took a talented squad to Spain, and as usual England fell after playing well but not quite well enough.  Sven’s critics suggest that he has underwhelmed despite having world class talent, but the 1982 team was drawn from a league that was dominating European club competition.    Bobby Robson had his fair share of ups and downs, and ended on a high note that nobody would have predicted in 1988 when his team lost embarrassingly to everyone it faced in the European Championships.   Did he achieve more than Sven?  Possibly.  But it’s a close run thing.  Then the nineties!  England missed the USA World Cup, stumbled to the semi-finals in the 1996 (home) tournament despite playing poorly in three games along the way, and showed signs of life in 1998 before losing on penalties again.   The managers behind the nineties England teams were a mixed bunch (and more numerous by far than any other decade’s collection) but can any of them reasonably say that they made a better fist of things than Sven?  I don’t think so.

Explanation later…

Update

I added the above while at work. As such there was no time to comment, but it was placed in response to a fascinating posting on the Guardian website. The subject is Hungarian football, and what’s gone wrong with it.

For those of you who don’t know, Hungary once had the best team in the world. At this point in time England thought that they as inventors of the game still had this position sewn up, despite a fair bit of evidence to the contrary. In 1953 Hungary visited England, and the feeling at home was that while the Hungarians certainly had a fair team, they’d be no match for our boys at Wembley. Well so much for that. Nandor Hidegkuti and Ferenc Puskas sliced England to bits and Hungary won 6-3. It could’ve been a lot worse too, but Hungary missed a boatload of chances.

Fair enough, thought England, these things happen. We’ve been taught a lesson but we’ll show them. So England visited Budapest in 1954, and promptly got spanked 7-1. Hmmm.

In that year Hungary were red hot favourites to win the World Cup, but suffered from a key injury (Ferenc Puskas) and a dodgy pitch (in the final, which negated some of their verve), and lost to West Germany in that final. The 3-2 scoreline is all the more remarkable given that Hungary had scored twice very early on, and that they had beaten the Germans 8-3 in the group stage. This, however, had been a shadow German side, and the final was a different proposition.  The Germans won the World Cup and the Hungarians would have to be content with knowing that they had once been damn good.  There would be no trophy to prove it.

From then on things got slowly worse for Hungary, which is where the linked article comes in and where my chart does too. The idea is to show that since the mighty peak of the late 40s and early 50s the team has been gradually declining with each passing generation, and is now at a fairly low ebb. The line represents points per game, with three points for a win. So a team winning every game would average 3. Hungary was up around 2.5 in the late 40s, which is remarkable.
So that’s what the graph’s for.

Another quiet day for football, unless Chelsea and Barcelona floats your boat. Actually, it should float my boat, but I’m getting a bit overkilled on all this football (yea, really) and a break must be taken. And anyway, I want to watch an Italian team.

Others are writing though. Nick the Swede has a thoughtful piece on the increasingly maligned Liam Rosenior. I agree with Nick… but… there’s something not quite there with the young right-back. Nick points out that Rosenior completes the same number of passes as anyone else, which is fair enough, but still something doesn’t quite add up. It could be that Rosenior is more inclined to producing Disaster Passes, passes that are so bad that everyone watching frowns, scratches their chin, and wonders aloud “did a professional footballer really do that?” It could also be that this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy: we now think “Rosenior can’t pass”, and as soon as he misplaces one we all say to ourselves “see, there it is again, Rosenior and his poor distribution”.

I suspect that the truth is buried somewhere in the above, but remain unconvinced that he’s anything other than a reasonably effective right-back who might look a better player than he really is at the moment. Full-back is a position associated with reliability and efficiency, and Liam’s not there yet (note ‘yet’: he clearly has bags of potential). However, I am frequently wrong about these things and would be delighted to see him take his game to the next level.

What a nice night for a game. I got the usual bus up from Tooting, accompanied by two policemen who must have known something about something. They came upstairs and chatted together and seemed pretty relaxed. We reached Putney in no time, and I hauled myself down the stairs and over the road through the evening traffic.

There was a small swell of people crossing the bridge, a lot of couples and a lot of boisterous youngsters geeing themselves up for the game. There was a light mist on the Thames and the Cottage floodlights crept over the tallest of the Bishops Park trees, illuminating the river and lending atmosphere to an already exciting evening.

I love the conversations you pick up on the way to games, flitting in and out of others’ worlds:

“I’ve broken my collar-bone!” from a gent who had stopped to talk on his mobile.

“She’s so fit. No, not like that. It’s just the way she cuts my hair” from a lad in a group of friends.

“They’re new LED boards. Like at Man Utd!” from a young man with his girlfriend. “Wow!” she said.

“Lucas! Luke!” from some teenage lads to me.

Sadly, I was not the Luke they needed. After a refreshing tromp through the park I nipped through the crowded Stevenage Road melee and dived through the turnstyles. On to the stand, and after some row vaulting I was at my seat next to a friendly looking fellow in a Fulham hat.

The good thing about being near the front of the Johnny Haynes stand (K block) is the view you get players nearby. I watched Luke Young warming up, and until he turned around I was sure I was watching Matt Holland. They share postures and mannerisms, upright but relaxed, but with a presence. Fitting perhaps that both are or have been young captains. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink stopped to sign a couple of programmes for kids leaning over into the tunnel, one of whom pointedly shouted “Hasselbaink!” at him. Nobody else took the time to sign for the kids, not that I blame them, they had a job to do and there’s a time and a place for all that. Liam Rosenior did stop for one lad after the game, which was cool of him after an indifferent performance.

The game was described in a previous post, but it was a weird atmosphere for the most part. Charlton were sporadically awful in the first half and yet ended up playing Fulham off the park for 20 minutes. I wondered how the crowd would react at half time, and sure enough there were some half-hearted boos from all-around the ground. Nothing too heavy, but enough to let the team know that it hadn’t been good enough. Ian Pearce, the lone star of that period, sprinted ahead of the traipsing group of players and into the changing rooms. I shouted at him in approval.

Later we all enjoyed that most beautiful of feelings, the game killing two quick goals burst. After that it was time to sit down, relax and take things in. Job done.

0-0 at half time.  The crowd jeered the players off.   In the second half Chris Coleman introduced Claus Jensen, and in so doing created a perfect storm of attacking football.  For 15 minutes Fulham were untouchable, McBride driving home from 20 yards for 1-0, Jensen himself racing clear to slam in a second.  It was the best football we’ve seen all season, and it was thrilling to see.

Charlton were a poor side.  For the first 20 minutes they misplaced passes, miscontrolled the ball, and headed it into empty spaces.  They looked lost.  Fulham drove forward initially, but gradually ceded the initiative to Charlton, who had their best spell of the game in the period immediately before half-time and looked the more likely of the teams to score.  They didn’t though, giving Fulham time to regroup.   My immediate thought was ‘we can’t lose to a team like this’, but it did feel like a possibility.

Jensen’s introduction transformed the game, Helguson making way and giving Fulham an extra man in the middle of the park, which made a massive difference.  All credit to Coleman for making such an astute move, and credit to Jensen for making it work.  He immediately showed craft and guile, and looked a class apart.

At 2-0 the game should’ve been safe, but there was a further twist as Darren Bent nicked a sharp goal to pull one back.  This was the first sniff he’d had all night, and came after a Charlton appeal for a penalty was (rightly) turned down.  I was busy telling the ref that this certainly wasn’t a penalty so I didn’t see the build up, but Bent’s finish looked good and Niemi had no chance.

It was a shame for our centre-backs, who deserved a clean sheet.    Pearce played Bent magnificently in the first half, disposessing the lively forward on numerous occasions.  Zat Knight was doing his fair share too, and between them they looked a superb combination.   The full-backs had nights to forget though: Rommedahl was too much for Queudreu and Franck was beaten repeatedly by the turbo-charged winger; our new left back has had a good season to date, but he’ll be having nightmares about Dennis Rommedahl for some time.   On the other flank Rosenior’s now famous distribution was on show for all to see, at first awful, then gradually better as he played safe, then, miraculously, he set up the second goal with a nice clipped pass into Jensen’s stride.  This doesn’t camouflage his generally poor play though.  He needs to improve.

The midfield was good, Bouba Diop had his best game of the year and Routledge was lively if not particularly threatening.  Radzinski, starting on the left, had a useful match and was always a threat.  Michael Brown seemed a little subdued in the first half, but he got going later on and flew around the pitch in customary fashion for a time.  He’s the heartbeat of the side at the moment.

McBride ran all night and was a pleasure to see.  He richly deserved his goal and is an easy player to like.  He was supported by the similarly eager Helguson, who played as he has all year, which is to say that he gave his all but it didn’t really happen for him.

So another good three points.  It was a game that should have been won, but equally, one that could have been tricky.

More on England then I’ll leave it.

In the process of reading Leo McKinstry’s excellent “Sir Alf”.  One of the points that is coming through is that when the great man took over England it wasn’t all plain sailing.   Ramsey wasn’t overwhelmed by the 4-2-4 that was en vogue at the time, and wasn’t convinced that he had the players to make it work.  So in appropriate games he worked in a 4-3-3.  It didn’t always work and the players weren’t sure that this was a positive move, but Ramsey became more and more sure that this would give him the best chance of success in 1966.    Key messages there: tactical experimentation and patchy results.  The conclusion to this, as you know, was a famous win at Wembley.

So perhaps we should give Steve McLaren a bit more time?  I’m as disappointed as anyone, and I don’t think the signs look all that good, but consider what we’re asking.  The assumption is that England need to be more attacking, more exciting.   What are the press doing?  They’re fostering an environment in which McLaren and the players are almost bound to play safe, knowing that if they fail by conventional means they’ll get stick, but not nearly as much as if they fail trying something new.   It’s a tricky situation.

As for Fulham, it’s been a long time hasn’t it?  Honestly, I’m dreading the Charlton game, which we should win but has banana-skin written all over it.   Charlton are bottom of the league but have been playing much better than that, and with the international break behind them they’ll be raring to go on Monday.  Coleman’s boys will have to be at their best (again) to take all the points, but I think the team is capable of doing the job.   Routledge must start, and must get a lot of the ball.   My fear is that Darren Bent will catch us on the break.. I can picture it really clearly, a long ball fired into the night sky that leaves Knight and Pearce half-turned, by which time Bent is away. Racing clear, he draws Niemi and fires home for a shocking late winner.  Ah, paranoia, we’ll be fine.  But lads, be careful out there.

In other news, there’s a really good piece on the Fulham fitness regime on the official site, which explains the transformation of Ian Pearce (who’s getting a lot of good press from within the club lately) into the almost-all-conquering centre-half we’ve enjoyed this year.      Have a look.
 

England lost as we all knew they would.  It was a comfortable 2-0 win for Croatia, the first goal a header in the six yard box for which the forward did not have to jump despite being surrounded by defenders, the second an own goal that was at once tragic, comic and hubristic (I may have made that word up).  It was awful to see.

McLaren had boldly deviated from the cherished 4-4-2 and sent out five defenders, Jamie Carragher joining Joking Rio, Terry, Neville and Cole.  We played one midfielder (Scott Parker) and two forwards (Rooney and Crouch), with two auxiliary players (Carrick and Lampard) whose role was to sneak around the pitch as quietly as possible.  In this they excelled. 

Croatia have not lost a competitive home match since reformation, and this was never going to be easy.  0-0 would have been a good result, and was probably the result McLaren expected.   A defeat here was no disgrace.   What is frustrating is that this appears to be a team that is in freefall, clueless about itself and its opposition.  Rubbing it in a little, Slaven Bilic said after the game that he was delighted with the 3-5-2, as this gave his players the space they wanted.  They certainly used it well.

This was the second game in a row against Eastern European opponents in which England have been outclassed on the ball.  Macedonia gave us a fright at the weekend, Croatia gave us the real thing last night.  No England player imposed himself on the match, no England player even got stuck in as English players are supposed to do.  There was nothing there.  

We over-react where the England team is concerned, but I suspect that the personalities involved have become somewhat typecast now.  Can we look at Rio Ferdinand as anything other than a massively paid under-developed airhead centre-back?   Ashley Cole needs no further discussion.   John Terry is perhaps tainted by the team he plays for, but even he seems to be out of form now.   Frank Lampard is half the player he was.   He appears to have lost all hunger for the game.   Paul Robinson was quoted as saying he is glad that the second goal wasn’t the one that cost him his clean sheets record.   Now, this may have been taken out of context, but really, Paul, who gives a rat’s about your clean sheet streak?   You just hacked at air in a vital European Championship qualifier.  Yes it bobbled, yes Gary Neville should have aimed wide of the posts, but Robinson missed the thing.  

So what next?  A very long wait for the next game.   We will probably still qualify, we may even do so in style, but there’s something about this team that makes them very hard to like.