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HappyhammerAndy

England, incapable of playing 4-4-2 formation.

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Further to earlier comments on here about the state of our game, I concur.

After being asked, John Toshack recently wrote an article in a national newspaper, slating England''s tactical abilities and their technical skills with the ball. Some of his points unfortunately, sounded possible.

Toshack has managed about 9 clubs including many abroard. He says that he is in a good position to comment on our woes, as seen by foreign players and clubs.

The England team is not rated as a serious threat to them.

England play a unique system of 4-4-2 unlike most other teams in Europe. It can  be successfull against lower nations. However, against better teams, it is relatively easy to penetrate.  

England play 3 rigid straight lines across the field. Against superior quality players, they are able to easily thread the ball into the spaces. Like Arsenal, all the players are comfortable on the ball, They are at ease anywhere on the pitch and play a more flexible game.

Comendably, dads run their young children all over the country to play in games. Unfortunatly, the loudest cheers are reserved for such skills such as a headed clearences by the centre half or a tough tackle by a midfielder. Couldn''t those long hours spent on the motorway, be better spent on the training ground developing the youngster''s technical skills and touch on the ball? 

Finally, he believes that as a result of the above, less and less home grown players will play in the Premiership.

Does this strike home with anybody?

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england can play 4-4-2 they just play the wrong players

i.e midfielders for me would be hargreaves and one another

i would drop lamps n gerrard until they perform for england, not just club level everyone moans at lamps but cant remeber gerrard last truly good game

left wing should be ashley young, what more can he do? he playing top 8 side n consistent everyweek, j.cole is luxury, but in big games he isnt able to defend n help out a.cole, young although attacking gets back

right wing id play lennon or bentley

centre halfs sod sol campbell of start breading the youth in stephen taylor etc..

goalkeep carson, green, kirkland in my squad, play carson, great keeper, just got bought in unexpectedly really and in such big game to start in

 

                                                              carson

richards                           taylor                                 terry                           cole

 

lennon                           hargreaves                        scholes                           young

 

                                       rooney                        owen

 

new manager should do everything in his powers to lure scholes back in squad for one last run until end 2010 world cup

upfront owen fit you have to play, rooney i consider another luxury but he can really turn in a performance once n while so he would have to stay

any thoughts ??

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i agree 100% with toshack, our players are incapable of keeping the ball against the better sides, we''re far too rigid. the best sides move around and change positions,

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i personally think toshack should concentrate on his welsh team

they hardly the envy of the home nations at the moment

you give me match vs any of them and wales would be my pick bar hennessey not playing ;-)

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We have some very skilful players - unfortunately they can''t play with each other. No-one can deny that Rooney, Joe Cole, Beckham, Lampard and Gerrard are as good with a football as almost anyone you can find in the Italian or Brazilian teams, unfortunately they''re just useless when they play together. Forget this "you have to play your best players" crap, and play your best team. This means players who aren''t so skilful but want to work for the team. That way you have to play a fairly basic formation (i.e. 4-4-2) because the players won''t have the ability to adapt to anything else, and you may not win anything, but you''ll get better results than with the current crew of wasters. It''s called facing up to the truth. So pick players like Green, Richards, Hargreaves, Barry, Pennant, Owen, Heskey, Crouch - players who''ll die for the cause. And if you can get Carragher and Scholes to come out of retirement, great. We didn''t have the most skilful players in 1966 but we had a great team.

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[quote user="ob1"]Movenment off the ball - England have none...[/quote]

Wayne Rooney comes into mind, i think he has movement off the ball

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fao we8wba

Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough? Toshack was asked to comment on the inability of England to qualify for major tournaments by the newspaper. He did not just have a rant at the setup for no reason.

Sorry.

 

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[quote user="we8wba"]

[quote user="ob1"]Movenment off the ball - England have none...[/quote]

Wayne Rooney comes into mind, i think he has movement off the ball

[/quote]

Got a cloning machine?  

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[quote user="we8wba"]

england can play 4-4-2 they just play the wrong players

i.e midfielders for me would be hargreaves and one another

i would drop lamps n gerrard until they perform for england, not just club level everyone moans at lamps but cant remeber gerrard last truly good game

left wing should be ashley young, what more can he do? he playing top 8 side n consistent everyweek, j.cole is luxury, but in big games he isnt able to defend n help out a.cole, young although attacking gets back

right wing id play lennon or bentley

centre halfs sod sol campbell of start breading the youth in stephen taylor etc..

goalkeep carson, green, kirkland in my squad, play carson, great keeper, just got bought in unexpectedly really and in such big game to start in

 

                                                              carson

richards                           taylor                                 terry                           cole

 

lennon                           hargreaves                        scholes                           young

 

                                       rooney                        owen

 

new manager should do everything in his powers to lure scholes back in squad for one last run until end 2010 world cup

upfront owen fit you have to play, rooney i consider another luxury but he can really turn in a performance once n while so he would have to stay

any thoughts ??

[/quote]

Well I like your inclusion of Ashley Young. He should have featured more than he has for England already. He''s ridiculously fast with the ball at his feet and he''s going to become one of the most dangerous players around, I think.

As for the right wing... David Beckham is still my choice there. He''s probably the one truly "world class" player England can call upon, nobody can deliver the quality he can. He''s never relied on pace and with the way footballers look after themselves these days I see no reason why he can''t play another 3 years at international level. Especially if you''ve got someone like Richards supporting him from fullback.

I don''t really consider Scott Carson to be anything special. He''s a good keeper but like all the other goalkeeping options at the moment he''s not outstanding. I''d play David James, I don''t really care what he''s done in the past. He''s coming to the end of his career now and he''s got something to prove, he wants to be remembered for the right reasons. In my opinion he''s the best English goalkeeper in the game at the moment.

Upfront we have to stick by Michael Owen when he is fit because we don''t have anybody who can score goals like he can. I don''t know who I''d play with him though. Do you go with someone like Heskey who is there to do a job and will do it or do you go with Rooney who probably isn''t the best partner for Owen but has the ability to produce something brilliant from nothing?

Is it time Woodgate is given a proper go at centreback? They always say when it comes to natural ability he''s probably the best we''ve got, is it time for him to step up and show people what he''s made of?

As for central midfield...haven''t got a clue at the moment. I guess although Gerrard has been disappointing recently I think I''d still be interested to see how him and Hargreaves combined over a decent run of games.

 

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[quote user="Old Boy"]We have some very skilful players - unfortunately they can''t play with each other. No-one can deny that Rooney, Joe Cole, Beckham, Lampard and Gerrard are as good with a football as almost anyone you can find in the Italian or Brazilian teams, unfortunately they''re just useless when they play together. Forget this "you have to play your best players" crap, and play your best team. This means players who aren''t so skilful but want to work for the team. That way you have to play a fairly basic formation (i.e. 4-4-2) because the players won''t have the ability to adapt to anything else, and you may not win anything, but you''ll get better results than with the current crew of wasters. It''s called facing up to the truth. So pick players like Green, Richards, Hargreaves, Barry, Pennant, Owen, Heskey, Crouch - players who''ll die for the cause. And if you can get Carragher and Scholes to come out of retirement, great. We didn''t have the most skilful players in 1966 but we had a great team.
[/quote]

I don''t know if I agree that some of players are as technically gifted as Brazilians but I do agree with the rest of your post.  Saying that though we do have good players and I think it''s foolish that some people say we don''t.  I would bet that a lot of the top teams around Europe would take Rooney, Gerrard etc.

Personally I think all this talk of tactics and formations mean nothing.  It''s the players and team selection that are the problem.  Gerrard and Lampard can clearly not play together yet they are continually paired together. Despite Barry playing so well for England, McLaren still had to find a way to fit Lampard back in and this has been our biggest problem for so long.  Too many players are automatic choices, if injuries had not happened in the past year or so you could almost have bet your mortgage on what the team for Croatia would have been (other the strange Carson choice).  Back four would have been Neville, Ferdinand, Terry, Cole.  Midfield would have been Beckham or Wright-Phillips, Lampard, Gerrard, Cole and up front Rooney and Owen.  That team has been mainly cast in iron for 3 or 4 years barring injury.  That is the major problem with England, no matter how the players perform they are in again next game and although new players may break into the squad they never get in the team.  Carragher quit international football for that reason.  No matter how well he played he knew that he would straight back out again.  Look at the England team that played at Euro 2004 there are 3 players changed from the team I think would have been McLarens first 11.  James was in goal, Cambell was centre back but that was only because Ferdinand was banned and would have played and Scholes was in.  No doubt Scholes would sill be there had he not retired.  4 years of underperforming yet most of them still walk into the team.

Personally I think England need to think about doing what Van Basten has done with Holland.  Clear out a lot of the older, comfortable players and start building a team for the future.  Young hungry players who will learn international football playing in a team that works as unit.  All we have at the moment is 11 good players but a poor team.

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Toshack makes some good points but unfortunately nobody is listening. The failure to qualify for Euro 2008 should have led to a nationwide debate about the state of football in this country but it won''t happen. Just three days after the England game Steven Gerrard put in a man of the match performance against Newcastle and the media were all over it. His performance showed what a world class talent he is and why couldn''t he have played like that against Croatia? Could the answer possibly be that Croatia are ever so slightly better than Newcastle. Then we get somebody on this thread claiming that Gerrard and Lampard are as good on the ball as anyone in the Brazil or Argentina side. It''s almost as if last Wednesdays game has been totally wiped from peoples memory.

The Premiership is a fantastic export, it gets sold to all corners of the globe, but it does nothing to help the national team. It''s the most exciting league in the world but that doesn''t translate well into international football where possession is so much more important. If you try and play possession football at the tempo that the game is played in England then there is no margin for error and any slight technical deficiency is magnified. The more often you give away possession to the more technically gifted players you encounter in international football the more likely you are to lose (e.g. both games against Croatia, Russia away etc.).

The long term solution to our problems is to change the way our kids are coached from an early age so that the technical aspects of the game become more important than the physical ones. But to do this would also change the style of play favoured by Premiership teams. Now do we think that the big clubs, who hold so much power in the way that the game is run, would want this when the very uniqueness of The Premiership is the thing that helps it sell all over the world [^o)].

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jgp i agree mostly what you say

cant agree on woodgate he is injury prone, not performed since early newcastle days to high enough standard to get in england 1st team, is he even fit?

what i cant understand is how mcdonut pee''d of carragher, aguably the most consistent english defender in the past 3seasons

in one friendly he put ledley king over carragher

in the 2nd he put woodgate

truly shocking

taylor/rio/terry/carragher would be great options for centre half

richards is the ideal centre half partner for terry, but he is prob need more in right back

but neville comes back thats the good one in gary, then maybe thats an option, but if he retires or injured then we snookered again, so how about glenn johnson, may not be the finished article by any means, but young ambitious and gives it his all, would do in qualifing not sure on big occasions though. he needs to be getting games though if i was to include johnson

youth is where we should go, but i feel the key is getting scholesy back

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I''d like to see us have a go at playing like Milan do in a 4-3-2-1.

                                 Green

Richards      Taylor      Ferdinand        A.Cole

               Lampard      Hargreaves      Carrick

                        Rooney      J.Cole

                                 Ashton

Full backs provide the width and Hargreaves and Carrick sit deep to shield the defence. No place for Terry (too slow and stupid) or $tevie Me (too hyperactive). Not overly happy with picking Lampard but I can''t think of a young English central midfielder who could play that role. Only other problem is that there''s no room for Michael Owen with this formation, but he''s injured half the time anyway.

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the thread doesnt need to be titled "england incapable of playing 4-4-2"

it should read England Incapable of Playing.. or just England Incapable!

jas :)

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<<i would drop lamps n gerrard until they perform for england>>

Don''t you seen the contradiction in this statement? Both Lampard and Gerrard do perform for their clubs and the boo-boys are a disgrace to both this country and football. I agree that you can''t play both of them in central midfield, and the good performances with Barry playing for England tend to confirm this.

Joe Cole is not a luxury; he was our best performer in the World Cup.

He is technically the best player in England. He used to try and

demonstrate this as often as he could with tricks and flicks. Remember he came out of the same football cradle as Carrick and Rio Ferdinand, played with that flawed genius Di Canio. Mourinho

turned him into a very effective attacking midfielder who did a good

job for England on the left of midfield. He scores goals and creates

them. He is the nearest we have to a Brazilian-style player like Kaka. He gets back to help out the defence as much as any other midfielder. He''s certainly more capable than Beckham, Lennon or Wright-Philips in defence.I agree that the fact that we are not in a major Championship means we have the chance to rebuild from the bottom up and introduce talented youngsters who will gain experience by the 2010 World Cup. Ashley Young sounds as if he''s doing very well at Aston Villa (currently 6th in the Premiership) and scored last night and Agbonlahor is the highest-scoring Englishman in the Premiership with 6 (Lee Bowyer next with 4). Theo Walcott is starting to make his mark at Arsenal.We also need to create options for the style of play which someone like Mourinho would do. Ideally, we should play the fast passing and moving style of football that Man Utd and Arsenal play when at their best. We should be able to attack wide with players like Aaron Lennon or Wright Philips? Do we have anyone on the left other than Ashley Young? Of course, we can also play the long ball game when we are desperate, which is quite often.Hargreaves would be a good anchor to midfield with his pace and stamina and his reading of the game is improving. Gareth Barry is playing the best football of his life, is only 26 and deserves to continue in the England team. He also provides a left-footed option. Gary Neville''s long England career sums up our mediocrity. I can''t criticise him for his professionalism or dedication but he''s just very average for an International. Rio Ferdinand and Rooney are about the only fixtures I can see in the team. I think we may stick with Gerrard to drive the team on.

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i personally believe joe cole is luxury, i been to all england home games bar croatia last week in qualifing

when j.cole plays he doesnt defend, its ok when we play ecaduour, sweden, trinidads but when we played a half decent side with decent right winger he wasnt in a situation to cover, hence why i choose a.young, he does get back n cover, so does downing (although i wouldnt put him in the side)

as said j.cole can do something bit special, i would rather see him in centre midfield with say hargreaves than left wing

when was last time gerrard performed? hence my reason to drop him, make him feel he has to earn his role back, not just be fit to stroll into england side n play half heartly

anyone see his goal vs newcastle?? he never in million years score one of those in a game for us

on neville i disagree, i hate manutd n love to notice poor performers such as carrick rio, but neville is a rock, nothing gets past him

and with scholes i would love him back in

is it conciedence that we had no manutd players playing last week n we lost? i doubt it

all manutd players have that winning mentality banged into them, and we need a few old pro''s to go with the many youngsters we hope to throw in

obv no one is right on here, its all opinions end of the day

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