I love listening to the views of Souness, Hoddle, Waddle - straight talkers who tell the truth, all played abroad to a high standard and Hoddle has great coaching credentials.
Offensively, possession, creativity and passing we're improving.
But Hart, Baines, Jagielka are nowhere near world class, or as good as predecessors. We also don't protect the back 4.
Most international countries, at clubs like Chelsea and Liverpool play 4-3-3, with 2 midfielders in the 3 deft at protecting the centre of defence. Hodgson didn't do that, meaning Henderson and Gerrard were outnumbered in the CM battle and we were prone to the counter attack.
6/10 sounds fair to me. We played much better football than in the last 2 tournaments. Our main weakness was our defence and that was no real surprise considering its the first tournament we've played without Terry and Cole in defence. No Walcott and no Oxlade-Chamberlain was a major loss.
Glenn Hoddle? Wasn't he England manager in a previous life?
3/10? Ridiculous. We were narrowly beaten twice. You could play those three games on another day and we'd have got far more points (which equally wouldn't have made us world beaters).
We've have cruised out of 5 of those 8 groups as a second seed.
I'd have loved him instead of Hyypia and he would have stayed longer
6/10 sounds fair to me. We played much better football than in the last 2 tournaments. Our main weakness was our defence and that was no real surprise considering its the first tournament we've played without Terry and Cole in defence. No Walcott and no Oxlade-Chamberlain was a major loss.
We lost to a creaking, poor Italian team and a Uruguay team fielding one Premiership player and hung on for a draw against Costa Rica ranked 28th in the world. Thank God we were not in group A,B, E, F or G, it would have been even worse.
Tough group, we didn't disgrace ourselves losing very narrowly in both the games that mattered.
7/10 which is what I expected.
If we'd got the draw against either Italy or Uruguay, nobody would have said it was ill deserved. And I wonder whether Costa Rica would have beaten "a Uruguay team fielding one Premiership player"? I see Italy didn't. As it turned out, it was our shìt luck that Suarez wasn't available for their opener.
If just ONE of those three matches had turned out very slightly differently, we would probably have gone into the last game knowing a half decent win would have seen us through. Although I'd have to say that Colombia look far too good for ANY of the teams in our group at the moment.
Quite clearly, it's pretty far removed from that.I admire your optimism, it's in a similar vein to that film whereby Santa Claus would cease to exist if all the children stopped believing in him.
Most international countries, at clubs like Chelsea and Liverpool play 4-3-3, with 2 midfielders in the 3 deft at protecting the centre of defence. Hodgson didn't do that, meaning Henderson and Gerrard were outnumbered in the CM battle and we were prone to the counter attack.
You're right to say that defence was England's main weakness but, if that's the case, the defence needs maximum protection from the midfield and this didn't happen, which is all the more surprising given Hodgson's negative reputation. Ultimately England were naive in this competition: their defensive weakness, coupled with insufficient support from midfield, were brilliantly exposed by Italy.
I agree with both of these from a tactical perspective; the problem is I'm not sure who England have got who could have played as a genuine holding midfielder (of any quality). I'm not sure Huddlestone is mobile enough (and he's more in the mould of the way Gerrard played, as a deep lying playmaker, anyway), Rodwell has had no playing time at Man City and Parker is past it. Who does that leave?
I agree with both of these from a tactical perspective; the problem is I'm not sure who England have got who could have played as a genuine holding midfielder (of any quality). I'm not sure Huddlestone is mobile enough (and he's more in the mould of the way Gerrard played, as a deep lying playmaker, anyway), Rodwell has had no playing time at Man City and Parker is past it. Who does that leave?
Quite clearly, it's pretty far removed from that.
The fact is, the problems with the English national team are very deep rooted - we don't have enough good players coming through. This is borne out by the fact that our terrible defence picks itself, as the back ups were even worse. We can't keep the ball. Rooney was our "world class" player earning £300k a week, even though blatantly he isn't even in the world's top 50.
And it's no surprise. We have a culture at grass roots of lumping it forward, a culture of parents bawling at their kids from the sidelines, we don't emphasis keeping the ball, we don't have enough qualified coaches, the Premier League (with it's foreign vested interests) is too powerful and so on.
Blaming the manager is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. A manager, who incidentally, HAS managed to get us to two major tournaments despite the worst England team in a while, two years ago, when we even got out of the group. We'd have qualified under Hodgson 4 years ago, yet Capello barely managed it. He was expensive, and awful for England really. And now he's awful for Russia.