I think that in the past you would have been dead right. I have seldom fancied England to win championships and have never been into blaming managers when the side did not live up to unrealistic expectations.
But not this time. We had the talents available, but not the manager to know how best to use them. I have been complaining about SE for years after it became obvious that he had no idea about what the structure of his WC side should be.
After plenty of friendly and qualifying games available to get a side together (wasted by his predilection to give as many players 10 mins as possible) he arrives in the finals of the WC no wiser than years earlier. Suddenly it is the unfamiliar 1-4-1-4 and using one of the best link players in the game as the wasted target man and two of the best midfielders in Europe still trying to make sense of the changes. Even if there was merit in this formation it would never work unless he used the right men for the job, but he never had the guts or insight to do it. Who better than Crouch as target (with no Beckham) and Rooney, nominally, right midfield, plus Hargreaves holding? Everyone doing the job they do best. What a revolutionary concept!
Feck the Sewty MPs offFFS, we conquered them. If that commie cnut Reid wasn't bad enough, I will be damned if I will allow Brown to rule the country. The Conservatives are to recommend...
Who knows how far we would have got with one or two of our players not on song, but don't you suspect that if Sven had been dumped weeks back and some sensible, pragmatic manager like Venables or Sir B Robson (or you) had taken charge, we would have certainly shown better form and would have been good enough to beat a very ordinary Portugal side?
And I almost finished without mentioning Walcott, the most damning evidence of managerial stupidity we will ever see.
LC
