Thursday 30 June 2016

All aboard the England merry-go-round

And so, yet another England inquest begins. 

Same old media circus, same old grand gestures and, no doubt, the same old empty promises. 

We'll be told that the Premier League is to blame for shrinking the talent pool, that we need a winter break and we need to invest at grassroots level.

It's all excuses. 

The grassroots excuse is just to buy time, so that the incompetent buffoons at the FA are well out of it by the time the shit hits the fan - again. 

The problems are much more immediate than that.

There's nothing wrong with the talent available and this England team should be capable of reaching the latter stages. End of.

Confidence, attitude and complete mismanagement are the issues and all the way through Hodgson created more problems than he solved.

Why take a host of injured, unfit or out-of-form players to France in the first place?

Why move Rooney into midfield when he has never played there?

Why rest six players for the Slovakia game? That hardly paid off against Iceland did it.

Hodgson took it upon himself to do the FA's dirty work by quitting after England's toothless 2-1 defeat to Iceland. 

And it's true to type because he's been hammering nails into his own coffin since day one. 

Remember 2012 when he told a train carriage of fans that Rio Ferdinand's international career was over - without first discussing it with the defender?

Remember 2013 when he made an ill-advised team talk about feeding the monkey in reference to Andros Townsend?

Remember two weeks ago when his late defensive substitution cost us a win over Russia?

It's a shame because he's an honest guy and a nice guy but he was just never cut out for the England job.

His turgid, possession-based, stats-obsessed football showed no potency, no cutting edge and always struggled to break teams down.

His decision-making left us all scratching our heads as he persisted with injured, out-of-form players and never knew his best team.

In the build up to euro 2016, Hodgson's England camp were terrified of spies watching their training sessions.

They felt that when they had played their World Cup opener in Brazil 2014, that Italy already knew all their set-piece routines.

Was it not possible that there was just no creativity in England's tactics - and that any training-ground moves were so dull, so obvious, that Italy just dealt with them?

Let's face it, our only set-piece this tournament was for Harry Kane to smash them into the crowd.

But Roy is not solely to blame for the depths  the England national team has plumbed. 

The sooner the FA realise that they are responsible for a succession of poor decisions over managers, the better.

Steve McClaren, Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson all arrived for different reasons - "we need an Englishman/we need the best around/we need international experience" but none of them had an ounce of charisma between them. 

Even Sven Goran Eriksson failed to get our golden generation past the last eight - but at least his three quarter-finals were against big teams (Brazil and Portugal) and we gave them a good game. 

Now we can't even give Iceland a good game.  

Credit where it's due, the Nordic side were terrific. Tight, organised, efficient and fully deserving of their quarter-final spot.

But this England side are much better than what we saw on Monday night. This Three Lions squad are, player for player, one of the most talented in decades.

And it should not take extra investment or more patience until Russia 2018 or Euro 2020 to see it come together because, under the right manager, it will click pretty quickly.

Under the right manager, these players can compete - and maybe even win something.

Yet the chances of the FA picking the right man for the job are almost non-existent. 

And if that's the case, then we'll have to stomach this nonsensical merry-go-round for generations to come.

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