The “Inquest” Begins
Germany 4-1 England
We’ve got 2 weeks until a decision on Fabio Capello is made. Then we’re supposedly going to have an “Inquest”. I hadn’t realised that this was a rape case or terrorist incident but there you go. In this post I’ll discuss and conclude my own personal “Inquest”.
One issue I want to nip straight in the bud is this tiredness thing. Fabio seems to want to offer excuses rather than look at the real reasons. In my opinion a half cooked England should have shown more desire than that against Algeria. Also does Dirk Kuyt look tired? Carlos Tevez? Ricardo Carvalho? Any of the Inter Milan Players? Any of the Barcelona Players? Not really. They all look sharp and like they want to play, with passion. If you offer excuses they will simply be taken and that can only paper over the cracks.
I’m not about to fully jump on to the Fabio bashing bandwagon but obviously a lot of the blame must fall on to his shoulders. I believe there are two huge reasons for the England teams’ performances:
1. Squad selection.
2. Team Selection.
The squad selection would have been OK were he to have a formation in mind that suited the whole squad but did he really go there thinking that the best he could come up with was the Gerrard on the left 4-4-2 formation? If he has this in mind he needs to have flexibility in the squad to change things but he has no out and out left sided player. Adam Johnson would have been perfect for this. He’s not just a flat-track bully, he can play football and he can play on both sides. The big one for me is Heskey. I’m sorry bhut that is very bad judgement. The qualifying campaign is not justification for selecting piss poor players, in the squad and the team. How Joe Cole didn’t get more minutes I don’t know. He has the quality and technical ability we needed at this World Cup. Granted he wouldn’t have won it on his own but it only takes one piece of brilliance to inspire a team.
The team selections very much frustrated me. Fabio seemed too stubborn not to try something a bit different. Teams knew how to play against us and what’s more we didn’t have a fluid style of play. With the midfield being so narrow it was crying out for the full backs to get more involved but they simply didn’t. I find it hard to believe that it was because of the full backs. They do it for fun for their clubs. Another really worrying factor was the apparent inability of the manager to be able to change things during the game. A massive characteristic of a good manager is the ability to see things aren’t right and change things on the fly, but no, let’s just play how everybody expects. Finally on this point. It is not the managers’ job to simply botch together a team to accommodate players in whatever position or role for the sake of having them in the team. The team needs to be balanced and have harmony in it. Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard and Barry were all asked to play in systems that aren’t synonymous with why they got into the squad. Gerrard, Lampard and Barry all play as parts of a central midfield 3 when at their clubs. Rooney either plays up front on his own or has a secondary striker feeding him chances. 4-4-2 does work but with the right players in the right positions. Unfortunately Lampard or Gerrard would have to go if he persisted on the flat 4. This would have still meant that we would have been destroyed by Germany in midfield though.
So what’s the answer? The team were NOT too tired. They should all be playing until they are literally exhausted. A team will not play well if they are low in confidence or unhappy, no matter who is in the side. Look at Chelsea under Scolari. They had a very good squad but they didn’t like the training methods, the system didn’t suit them and in turn the players weren’t happy. Then look how they all played under Hiddink. This would suggest to me that there is a big void between the players and Capello. I would assume that they don’t want to fight for a manager that will not listen, change or adapt for them Look how the Chelsea and Inter Milan players fought for Mourinho. You could argue that they should be fighting for the country and you would be right but at this level everything needs to be right in order to be a good side. I believe that the senior players and staff, along with the FA all need to sit down and discuss things. If there is a problem then things need to change. I personally do not believe that sacking the manager every 5 seconds is the right answer but if there are inherent problems then this needs to be addressed. The side issue with this is who would be in line to replace Capello? Redknapp seemingly would be up for it, god knows why when he is about to play in the Champions League with Spurs. If I were to choose anyone then it would perhaps be Hiddink but he’s to be Turkey boss. So who does that leave us with? Klinsmann? Scolari? Beckham? Shearer? Pearce? MacLaren?! Doesn’t fill you with joy does it.
We got to the Under 21 European Championships final last year and I would love to see something come from that. The only thing stopping this is the nature of the Premier League. Will these players get first team football? Probably not, whereas they do in Germany. Chelsea are promoting at least 5 players from their academy this year – great you say – only one of them is English (Sam Hutchinson). Perhaps there’s a bigger problem than Fabio Capello.
