World Cup Nonsense

[El Gordo]

I'm not comfortable with blamefests, but we can at least make some observations about how things might have been done differently, and more effectively.

It seems to me that the key to our failure is in our inability/reluctance to change things around when they are clearly not working. Beckham was never going to be dropped, despite his anonymity. Every time Lennon came on, the game woke up, yet Sven didn't consider playing him from the start in place of Beckham.

Lampard is (I'm told) a great player, but he was badly off-form through this tournament. He could have been dropped from that midfield without subtracting anything from its effectiveness.

Like Beckham in 2002, Rooney was considered a talisman, someone who had to be there to give us any chance at all. The truth is that apart from occasional flashes of skill (none of which led to anything) Rooney was a disappointment. This wasn't his fault. He could still have contributed a lot to this team, but, recovering from a long lay-off, it was too much to expect him to play on his own up front. He was starved of opportunities, and when he did get the ball, he seemed to have no options.

I've never liked the lone-striker option unless it's forced on you by having a player sent off, or late on in a game if you're defending a lead. To start with one up front is negative, and deeply frustrating to see in a cup game where you have to win.

With the luxury of someone who can pontificate without having to take responsibility, it seems obvious to me that we should have played a more aggressive 4-4-2 with Crouch and Rooney up front, Lampard on the bench and Lennon on for Beckham. Against an ordinary Portugal side, we could have won convincingly in normal time.

With Rooney sent off and Beckham injured, we started to play our best football of the tournament, so I don't have much patience with the view that Rooney's sending off was to blame for our defeat. What's interesting is that we played with a different spirit after the dismissal. It was as if the red card galvanised the side. Quite apart from the personnel changes, it makes you realise just how timid England had been up till then. What a difference it would have made to have had a side pumped up from the start. This is where you have to wonder whether Sven was just too limp for this job. Imagine a Martin O'Neill or a Scolari or a Ferguson there. What was shocking about this England performance through the tournament was the seeming lack of confidence of the players. A more assertive manager would surely have produced a more assertive side.

The tragedy is that these are great players. I'm not sitting here this morning bemoaning the lack of talent in the side. We had a playing squad capable of winning the World Cup, but we evidently didn't have a management capable of winning it. It turned out that a piece of flimsy red cardboard actually did a better motivational job than they did.