From The Times:
"I heard someone say on Saturday that Peter Crouch had failed to show that he can be an buttet for England, but I disagree strongly with that. For me, he had a decent game and, if anything, he proved what a weapon he could be in the World Cup next summer.
"OK, he didn't score, but he helped to set up the goal with the flick-on that led to Michael Owen being held back for the penalty. He also played Owen in a couple more times and always put the ball into the right spaces, whether it came to him in the air or on the ground. Maybe these are subtle things that will have gone unnoticed by most people watching, but I have no doubt that Sven-Gsran Eriksson will have been happy with the job Crouch did.
"He is a great type of player for any manager to have, but particularly so in England's case, bearing in mind that most of the other strikers in or around the squad ÷ the likes of Jermain Defoe and Andrew Johnson ÷ are probably too similar to Owen in terms of their physique and the way they play.
"More and more, football these days is about gaining a strategic advantage over your opponents. If you're playing against a packed defence and you've only got one way to break it down, you become predictable. But if you've got a centre forward who is 6ft 7in and is going to win a high percentage of the balls played to him in the air, that's very hard for the opposition to counter. If that centre forward also happens to be good on the ground, good with his back to goal and intelligent in what he does with the ball, that's going to be even harder. I'm not saying I would start with him, but I am saying it's a great option.
"I just find it very ignorant when people dismiss a player like that because it shows that they have made up their mind about him and are not watching him closely enough to appreciate what he does.
"Possibly people simply do not like the look of him, because he's all legs and he's got this gangly frame, and I can imagine that remaining the case no matter how good he becomes, but I like him a lot as a player and I think you will find that a lot of people in the game feel the same way."
-- "We havenāt got the distraction of the Champions League or the European Cup like some teams have." - Kevin Keegan
