English football and cricket.

Well. Which camp are you in ( if you'll pardon the expression )
1) Are you with the FA and ECB, who clearly feel there isn't much wrong with our football and cricket, bar a little bit of tinkering here and there. After our worst World Cup performance since 1958 ( and the last three World Cups have got progressively worse ) our manager gets complete endorsement to carry on for another two years. After the shambles in Australia and now a summer of cricket where England are getting worse by the minute, the selectors have decided to stick by the same players who keep letting England down. They have made one change and that was enforced.
2) The FA. Forget Dyke's blueprint. " I want us to be semi-finalists by 2022 "...FFS...Get someone in who understands football and sport and let the overrated Dyke concentrate on running his golf club and other business interests. The perfect candidate would be Seb Coe. He has achieved at the highest level as a competitor and administrator and has the ear of government. Knows his football inside out and can make big decisions. Wouldn't be afraid to shake up English football, which IMHO is needed.
The ECB/Selectors. Grow some ' you know whats ' and admit they have made a mistake with Peter Moores and Alistair Cook. The whole business of centrally contracted players needs reviewing. Too many players have got too cosy in the ' Club England ' set-up and barely play any cricket away from the International arena. Players are persisted with after months of failure and we are clearly heading in the wrong direction. Like football, cricket needs someone strong at the helm to restore pride and I would go for Ian Terence Botham but I'm sure you will have other ideas out there.
I just feel that we have two governing bodies that are not serving football and cricket well enough and that serious change is required to restore pride at national level.
" Lions led by Donkeys " springs to mind.

All Albion Supporters know what FA stands for. As for cricket. . . Well it is a gentleman's game sharing a few pints around the village green on a Sunday afternoon

I think the FA realise somethings wrong, Greg Dyke just published that rubbish about B teams for example. I think they recognise that we're in trouble because of the number of English players available but they don't know what to do. The only way to tackle it is to change the premier league and they don't have the will or the power to do so.

The ECB is in no where near in as much trouble however, because they are in a position to change things. We were debating the woe's of the current side yesterday on another thread, and I think the current team's decline is down to the players we've lost. A good comparison is the 2011 home series against India and the current one, the diffrences being we no longer have Trott, KP, Swann who were all world class players. We also have Prior and Cook who were in top form and world class players in 2011 and awful form currently. Right there that's 5 players that we're missing. On top of that Flower has since gone. Regardless of whether people like Moores or not, the problem English cricket faces was not created or perpetuated by him, we have lost a large part of that succesful side and we're struggling to replace them. We are going to have rebuild piece by piece. The new players who have come in look ok, which is promising. The next step is at the end of the series get a new captain in. Then we have to try and develope the spinners we have so that we can try and bring someone through. Ultimately it's not about growing new ones or failure to recognise the problems. It's about an ageing side fianlly giving way and the process of rebuilding being very hard.