sventhe backlash begins 257

It is reasonable, I suppose, to use Frances late improvement as a relevant example, but it does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. The fact is that our side were the worst of all of the final 32 in terms of ' TEAM '. They had less understanding as a side than eliminated teams like Japan, the Ausies and the rest. This was always going to be the managers failing despite having better players available than most of the rest. He has never showed that he had the tactical or strategic nounce to build a side from the players available as shown from his habit of grasping for proof of quality by giving players a 20 min run out. It has always been a case of "make me pick you" rather than "I know what we need to do and which players can do it" and so wasting the few friendlies we had to get our side into a unit,

God knows with Sven, but again you miss the point, Given injury or suspension, he would have had one more experienced player to give him alternatives, maybe not a world beater but neither is Crouch and he was able to do a decent job. Are you really in the Walcott camp? Pick a player who you later admit "needs more time" a fact which even his buttistant knew beforehand, along with most others who have any idea of what it takes to play in the WC.

We will never know how much lack of form was due to lack of direction,but even greater loss of form, despite 2 goals (one great and one a gift,) was with one you overlooked....Gerrard, who mainly went missing. Lampard was out of form but never hid and continued to get involved. SG didn't. Maybe he was just too pissed off with the performances as he does tend to blow hot and cold?

Their spending for a manager of such poor quality was a major error. Retaining him when his short comings became obvious was idiotic, what other word can we use? Their naive handling of seeking his replacement just reinforces the obvious. Hamfisted and amaturish,

We had some decent results over those years which was no surprise given that we had decent team members, but the German result was just one of those things on the night against a side with deep problems. Seems they might have improved as a side since? Might make you wonder what happened to the team who beat them?

Knee jerk? A very long one if it was as it started a year after Svens appointment. It is aso the first England manager I have ever blamed for our sides performance. Others were expected to perform wonders with very average players.

The idea of Rooney as sole striker really proves my point for me. A complete waste of his talents and certain to fail. Another experiment but this time in the final stages of the world cup for god sake. Poor Erickson obviously had not had enough time. I cannot imagine the distortions of common sense you have to go through to put up this feeble defence of Erickson but he needs the friends he can get right now.

No doubt many of his critics have now jumped on the anti Sven band waggonj, but you must realise it does not make them wrong?

LC