England - God we are awful

[MKDarlo]

I was so enraged yesterday I couldn't even comment on the match other than with swear words. I thought England had long since stopped making me mad but yesterday proved otherwise. We were shockingly poor, clueless, inept, feckless and disorganised. We had no plan and we still wouldn't have scored if were playing now.

I know England will always find creative new ways to cock things up but this is a new low. We have been beaten by a team from a country with no professional league, a small population, who have more volcanoes than footballers and they spend half the year indoors! Scandalous. It should be the end of lots of international careers. No one will ever convince me those players really, truly, care about playing for England or for us and they should just sod off.

The harsh truth is that we simply were not and are not good enough. The hype around the England players is vast and not one of them is as good as they think they are. The media trumpet that the premier League ( and therefore England players) as the best league in the world. I don’t think it is. Even if it is it is the best in the world it is not English players who make it so. It is the foreigners. How many of our players go abroad to learn new or different styles of play or footballing cultures? How many of our managers could turn in a tactically masterclass like Conte did for Italy v Spain last night? How many of our players show the kind of leadership required for “game management” like Spain, or Germany or Italy? That’s right. None. And please don’t tell me it is about building for the future ( which we seem to have done for at least 20 years) but about winning now.

We aren't good enough tactically, technically, intelligently, culturally ( football wise) or in fitness. The manager was inept, tepid, timid and seemingly unable to motivate or inspire a group of players. At times against Slovakia and Iceland he seemed unable to communicate his wishes and plans to his players. That was a manager who has had 3 tournaments in charge and is paid £4m a year. We have been shite in all of them.

Iceland played an “old fashioned” British 4-4-2. They were superbly organised, rigid and well briefed in their rolls, physical, direct, relied on long throws and set pieces and played in an English style. We didn’t have the class or nouse to break them down or deal with what should be a familiar style to any England player. Why? The one type of play we should be able to deal with and we couldn’t. Why?

Collectively the players looked confused and individually they failed to perform. Sterling was poor, Hart was at fault for the second goal, Rooney seemed to be carrying the whole team, the centre half paring looked like cart horses, the full backs didn’t seem to get forward like they had done or defend, midfield was non-existent, and WHY is our centre forward taking free kicks and corners. Wilshire got another game despite being terrible, and it took till 85 minutes had gone to get Rashford on. At least we didn’t see the chugger twins of Henderson and Milner.

God it was terrible – no doubt the next manager will be another nice placid chap (Southgate) who won’t rock the FA boat. I want a nasty, cynical, hard, horrible, dirty b****** who will actually win us some tournament games, tell the players how it is and get them to perform to a decent standard within a sensible system.

FFS!

[jjljks]

We are Darlo, we don't care who the next manager of those sad, overpaid, clueless, gutless Premiership pretenders, so long as the FA don't poach Martin Gray.

His results eclipse anything RH has ever done and is deffo not the 'nasty, cynical, hard, horrible, dirty b****** who will actually win us some tournament games, tell the players how it is and get them to perform to a decent standard within a sensible system'.

If there were any justice in the world, Hodgson would repay the £4M and give it to grass-roots football. Unfortunately, there is no justice........ but there is hope at Darlo

[Feethams 1966]

MK Darlo has hit the nail on the head with all of his points, and almost echos the comments on TV by Alan Shearer. Two things might cheer him up: Darlo would have beaten England easily this week, and Alan Shearer's in the running for the England job; I got odds of 16:1 on him at Corals. It would have been better if Michael Gove had secured the UK's borders before the England team got home.
If that doesn't make you smile, this made me laugh. Read in one of the papers that someone asked one of the 1966 world cup winning team how his 1966 side would have fared against Iceland. He said he thought his England team would have beaten Iceland 1-0. Only one nil asked the commentator? Well, most of us are in our seventies now, he replied.

[princes town]

I was so enraged yesterday I couldn't even comment on the match other than with swear words. I thought England had long since stopped making me mad but yesterday proved otherwise. We were shockingly poor, clueless, inept, feckless and disorganised. We had no plan and we still wouldn't have scored if were playing now.

I know England will always find creative new ways to cock things up but this is a new low. We have been beaten by a team from a country with no professional league, a small population, who have more volcanoes than footballers and they spend half the year indoors! Scandalous. It should be the end of lots of international careers. No one will ever convince me those players really, truly, care about playing for England or for us and they should just sod off.

The harsh truth is that we simply were not and are not good enough. The hype around the England players is vast and not one of them is as good as they think they are. The media trumpet that the premier League ( and therefore England players) as the best league in the world. I don’t think it is. Even if it is it is the best in the world it is not English players who make it so. It is the foreigners. How many of our players go abroad to learn new or different styles of play or footballing cultures? How many of our managers could turn in a tactically masterclass like Conte did for Italy v Spain last night? How many of our players show the kind of leadership required for “game management” like Spain, or Germany or Italy? That’s right. None. And please don’t tell me it is about building for the future ( which we seem to have done for at least 20 years) but about winning now.

We aren't good enough tactically, technically, intelligently, culturally ( football wise) or in fitness. The manager was inept, tepid, timid and seemingly unable to motivate or inspire a group of players. At times against Slovakia and Iceland he seemed unable to communicate his wishes and plans to his players. That was a manager who has had 3 tournaments in charge and is paid £4m a year. We have been shite in all of them.

Iceland played an “old fashioned” British 4-4-2. They were superbly organised, rigid and well briefed in their rolls, physical, direct, relied on long throws and set pieces and played in an English style. We didn’t have the class or nouse to break them down or deal with what should be a familiar style to any England player. Why? The one type of play we should be able to deal with and we couldn’t. Why?

Collectively the players looked confused and individually they failed to perform. Sterling was poor, Hart was at fault for the second goal, Rooney seemed to be carrying the whole team, the centre half paring looked like cart horses, the full backs didn’t seem to get forward like they had done or defend, midfield was non-existent, and WHY is our centre forward taking free kicks and corners. Wilshire got another game despite being terrible, and it took till 85 minutes had gone to get Rashford on. At least we didn’t see the chugger twins of Henderson and Milner.

God it was terrible – no doubt the next manager will be another nice placid chap (Southgate) who won’t rock the FA boat. I want a nasty, cynical, hard, horrible, dirty b****** who will actually win us some tournament games, tell the players how it is and get them to perform to a decent standard within a sensible system.

FFS!

Despite this . "The manager was inept, tepid, timid and seemingly unable to motivate or inspire a group of players" still 4 million quid better off a year. The FA should have studied his Liverpool and Blackburn records. One of he most over-rated managers in my living memory. A disastrous signing for England. Good talker bad walker

[QUAKERMAN2]

That lot are the most overpaid, over rated, passionless, mollycoddled bunch of "footballers" I have ever seen in an England shirt who are so average it sickens you.Rooney, Sturridge, Sterling, Kane, Del Ali.....all a total waste of space and as for Hodgson getting paid £70k a week and producing those performances was gut wrenching.He was the highest paid "coach" at the tournament which shows why the FA are totally clueless, surely the package should be performance related yet this idiot picks up a fortune for what over the last 4 years.Personally I cannot stand all that is wrong with the Premiership, not only the crazy money being paid to average footballers but the invasion of all these foreign players which is seriously affecting the development of our home grown talent.

Give me grass roots football any time, the likes of Thommo finishing a game and going straight onto a night shift, playing 9 games in 22 days to clinch promotion, lads playing for the love of the game, and what are all the England flops doing now, Rooney in Ibiza hiring a yacht for over £100k/week, Sterling putting a video of his house and 3 cars on youtube and Kyle Walker texting DURING the Euros he would rather be in Ibiza than France representing his country. Come on Malta, you must be favourites to beat this lot in October.

Rant over, come on Darlo, proper footballers who care.

[Neil Johnson]

English premiership players are nurse maided by the work of more talented foreigners and dont have the team ethic, because they are just filling a few positions and are no longer good enough for positions of leadership. A lot have been developed by poor FA churned out coaches, that have not little or no talent themselves. Experienced Championship players would be better than inept kids and has-beens from the premiership.

[Darlo_H]

The boat has left and money has won. The England team might cause the odd shock of actually winning a game that matters a couple of times in the future but it stands that our supposed best players are more concerned with their oversized headphones and stupid fucking haircuts to care.

You lose to Iceland, you go back to your 6 bedroom home in a leafy rural setting, you check the millions in your bank, and perhaps jet off to a holiday destination of your choosing flying first class and staying in a 5 star hotel. Then you come back, the press are more bothered about the league and hundreds of thousands of fans love you again.

Then you use this to remind yourself that it doesn't really matter what you do on the international stage, because playing for England doesn't pay your bills because people don't give a flying fuck after a month or so.

It's been this way for years and it'll continue as such, regardless of which manager is sipping from the poisoned chalice (if Southgate turns you down, you know you're shite).

[lo36789]

English premiership players are nurse maided by the work of more talented foreigners and dont have the team ethic, because they are just filling a few positions and are no longer good enough for positions of leadership. A lot have been developed by poor FA churned out coaches, that have not little or no talent themselves. Experienced Championship players would be better than inept kids and has-beens from the premiership.

The problems with grassroots football is numpties on the side lines who think they know it all. I have yet to find a circumstance where their understanding of developing a play wasn't fundamentally flawed.

That is not the reason the England team failed to beat Iceland though.

Talent was not the problem, we didn't necessarily have it throughout the 23 man squad but in the first XI we had the talent. Weaknesses had to be in motivation, mentality and direction. If there was a really good game plan in Hodgson's head his ability to implement was shocking - and these aren't players who can't implement game plans they do it week in week out successfully.

[spen666]

.... If there was a really good game plan in Hodgson's head his ability to implement was shocking - and these aren't players who can't implement game plans they do it week in week out successfully.

Reading this makes me think England simply had the wrong Hodgson as manager!


Seriously imagine if it had been down to Martin Gray to motivate this England side. They would not have lost with such a pathetic performance. I have yet to see a performance from his teams where the team play with a lack of effort or passion

[theoriginalfatcat]

.... If there was a really good game plan in Hodgson's head his ability to implement was shocking - and these aren't players who can't implement game plans they do it week in week out successfully.

Reading this makes me think England simply had the wrong Hodgson as manager!


Seriously imagine if it had been down to Martin Gray to motivate this England side. They would not have lost with such a pathetic performance. I have yet to see a performance from his teams where the team play with a lack of effort or passion

Nice sentiments Spen, but how many games have you actually seen with M.G. as a manager? Living in the south and supporting S'moor .......

[Comfortably_numb]

Agree with the sentiments of the OP but...... Those same pampered players won the pre tournament games with ease. Presumably with Hodgson having a plan etc.

Looks more like a tournament mentality thing. And the fear of failure appears to weigh heavily on our players.

I reckon it wouldn't take much to change this - just like the England ODI cricket team.