Archive for October 6th, 2006
The Concept: England v Macedonia preview
Still no Fulham business, so here’s an international preview:
England seem to be going with a flexible 3-5-2 tomorrow. This gives Gerrard the freedom to attack up the middle, and notionally does the same for the undroppable action man that is Wildfire Frank Lampard. Michael Carrick will be flexing his shielding muscles in front of the back three, which in reality means he’ll stand a bit deeper than normal, keep his knees clean and play some pretty sideways passes that don’t make trouble for either team.
It could very well be that McLaren has selected Carrick because he believes we’ll have most of the possession and won’t need a true defensive midfielder, and we’ll see what McLaren really thinks of the player when he picks his team for Croatia. If the Man Utd midfielder is still in the holding role for that game I will swear out loud no matter where I am… but let’s hold judgement on that until it happens. I do worry about that space in front of the defence though. Hargreaves has been great, but Paul Robinson has been beaten by a lot of 25 yard screamers in his England career and something smells funny about this. Perhaps we give players too much space, perhaps it’s just bad luck.
At the back the reliable Terry/Ferdinand axis of evil will again be crucial to our chances, this time supplemented by craggy old Gary Neville in a 3 man back line. That should be fine. Shaun Wright-Phillips will be whizzing up and down the right wing, and dear old Ashley Cole will do the same on the left. Peter Crouch and Wayne Rooney will be our front pairing. I’ll be watching to see if there’s any kind of Cantona-Cole relationship going on with those two, they seem not to click as well as might be the case. But this may just be my imagination.
So this England team should be more than good enough to take all the points from Macedonia, particularly at Old Trafford where we do seem to like playing.
Prediction: 3-1 win
