Carrick

[Kinky Gerbil]

I know he plays for spurs etc, However would it not be better for England to start him alongside either Lampard or Gerrard as these two are too attack minded and most decent sides have a holding midfielder. either that or play wing backs as below

Robbo
Campbell Ferdinand King
Cole Beckham
Lampard Carrick Gerrard
Owen Rooney

 

[the right footed denilson]

no ashley cole?

no john terry?

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

ash cole left wing back

 

[Schrödinger's Toad]

Wouldn't be too fussed about no John Terry ...

 

[the right footed denilson]

oh yeah! sorry!!

 

[B.M.F]

Terry has got to be in there. His form last year was superb. I know everyine says Gerrard is not defensive but I remember seeing him at right back for Liverpool and he was superb. Perhaps him and cole at wingback would suffice as Gerrard has a much better work ethic than Becks

 

[London Irish]

I can't confess to lying awake at night pondering England's optimum team on the world stage, but it seems to me the balance of the midfield is a much more interesting discussion than comparing the virtues of two closely-matched strikers like Defoe and Owen.

When England have succumbed in major tournaments to Brazil and Portugal, a key feature has been England's inability to match their opponents in keeping possession for long periods. This has often resulted in very good players like Gerrard and Beckham chasing shadows, and then losing possession cheaply if they ever happen to win the ball back.

So I can see the reasons why Kinky would want someone like Carrick to offer a more cultured balance to attack-minded box-raiders like Lampard and Gerrard.

But the question is, is Carrick really good enough

In fact, is any England holding/central midfielder good enough to match the high degree of technical passing excellence offered by the top world teams? That to me is the big question facing England as they try to win the big tournaments.

The old debate about whether the quicker-paced, more direct Premiership-style football really provides the best preparation to win world-stage tournaments won't go away until England answer the question.

 

[BensGrandad]

Do not worry all will be ok when Sol Campbell is fit enough to play alongside Ferdinand and Terry is removed to the benches where he belongs a very good club player but not an England 1st choice - I hope.

 

[Scotty Mac]

crouch as target man - need i say more

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

You dont need a target man so yes you need to say more

 

[BUTTERBALL]

Gerrard and Lampard are not effective in the same team. Too similar.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I agree with LI. I think that out of the current crop Carrick is as good a bet as anyone for the holding role, and a massive factor is he is about to have a whole season with Davids alongside him to pass on his wisdom.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Look at the best sides at the moment ll of them have a holding midfield player

 

[Stumpy Tim]

How anyone can suggest dropping either Gerrard or Lampard baffles me - two of the best midfielders in the world. Our team should be built around those two & Rooney.

Robinson,

Neville, Ferdinand, Campbell (Terry in the meantime), Cole

Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Downing
Rooney
Owen

 

[Commander]

How anyone can suggest dropping either Gerrard or Lampard baffles me - two of the best midfielders in the world. Our team should be built around those two & Rooney.

Robinson,

Neville, Ferdinand, Campbell (Terry in the meantime), Cole

Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Downing
Rooney
Owen

Agreed. Except maybe we should try Wright-Phillips on the left??

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Agreed. Except maybe we should try Wright-Phillips on the left??

As Gerrard and lampard dont work well together

 

[Schrödinger's Toad]

But the question is, is Carrick really good enough

From what I've seen, almost certainly ... he doesn't bomb around all over the pitch, but holds the position just in front of the defence, and his passing is as good as any I've seen in the Premiership. For me, he could do the same job that Alonso does for Spain, or Makelele for France - although Gerrard and Lampard are class players individually, they are too gung-ho and ill-disciplined to form a partnership. Playing three together could work, but Sven has shown little inclination thusfar to go that way.

 

[Silent Bob]

How anyone can suggest dropping either Gerrard or Lampard baffles me - two of the best midfielders in the world.

As you was clearly from their sterling performances at Euro 2004 and the rest of their time together for England.

The problem is, thye're both so similarly matched the only way to pick between the two would be to flip a coin.

Or maybe steal Chelsea's formation:

----------Robinson------
Neville-Ferdinand-Terry-Cole
----------Carrick---------
-----Gerrard--Lampard----
Wright-Phillips---------Rooney
-----------Owen---------

 

[Marshy]

We dont need a holding player, Gerrard and Lampard are good enough players to realise that if one bombs forward the other one sits.

Pretty simple really. Its all about discipline.

 

[Uncle Buck]

We dont need a holding player, Gerrard and Lampard are good enough players to realise that if one bombs forward the other one sits.

Pretty simple really. Its all about discipline.

Not what some experts think, but then anything to question Sven...

England need a Makelele

Danes expose defensive flaw with Lampard and Gerrard in the middle

Richard Williams
Friday August 19, 2005
The Guardian


Given a choice between, say, a wedding party on one side of the road and a car crash on the other, which do you watch? The obvious answer explains why England's humiliation in Copenhagen so completely drew the attention away from Denmark's triumph. But now, before turning to the darker matters arising from the affair at Parken Stadium, let us remember our manners and first of all acknowledge the achievement of the winners.

The representatives of a cultured and courteous people, their delight in the unexpected margin of victory was a pleasure to witness. As they stood in the emptying grandstand half an hour after Wednesday night's match, accepting the congratulations of family, friends and complete strangers, their unaffected attitude tellingly set them apart from their English counterparts, whose carapace of celebrity and complacency surely represents their most crippling handicap on nights such as this.
In the second half the hosts accepted every gift on offer from a team who, as Sven-Goran Eriksson remarked, suddenly stopped playing as a unit. To watch the red shirts raiding in the spaces left in front of and between the England defenders was to see players willing, even in a match of so little consequence, to seize the moment.

Why were they granted such glaring opportunities? Rio Ferdinand's doziness, David James's perennial unreliability and the patent immaturity of Glen Johnson, who seemed a better player at 18 than he does after two years on Roman Abramovich's payroll, are elements of the answer but not the whole of it.

It would be foolish to demand a wholesale reorganisation of the team on the strength of a bad half-hour in a friendly match. But it is worth thinking about why England were unable to prevent the Danes repeatedly capitalising on their frailities and what this might mean when it comes to games of real consequence next summer - if, as Eriksson added with commendable frankness and humility, they get that far.

In the 60th and the 63rd minutes, when Dennis Rommedahl and Jon Dahl Tomasson scored Denmark's first two goals, England's midfield was unchanged from the relatively well-grooved quartet with which Eriksson had begun the match. Before Michael Gravgaard added a third in the 67th minute the coach had made one change, replacing Frank Lampard with Owen Hargreaves. The nature of those goals suggested that the midfield players, particularly those in the central areas, were not doing the defensive work that must be part of their assignment.

Lampard and Steven Gerrard were, as usual, working on the informal assumption that one of them would drop back into a holding position whenever the other went forward. Both have good football brains but there are two flaws in that arrangement.

The first is that it is bound to break down from time to time, since to ask two men to think as one all the time is to expect the impossible. The player who is supposed to be providing cover will occasionally find himself out of position, and sometimes at such moments his partner will lose possession and enable the opposition to mount a counter-attack.

The second, and more significant, is that both Gerrard and Lampard, for all the physical power of the former and the stamina of the latter, lack a talent for defending. Neither is a gifted tackler, although Gerrard can be an intimidating and sometimes a successful one, as he proved after half an hour when Jesper Gronkjaer tricked his way past Ashley Cole on the halfway line.

But to do the job properly at this level requires a specialist, and it was no surprise that France revived their spirits on Wednesday when Claude Makelele came out of international retirement to help Zinedine Zidane, another returnee, inspire them to a 3-0 win over a talented Ivory Coast team. If Zidane took the headlines, Makelele received much credit for his work.

As L'Equipe's correspondent put it yesterday morning, the little Chelsea man provided "a windscreen-wiper in front of the defence, the first pass-provider or the last defender in midfield". This is the role filled for Germany by Dietmar Hamann and for Argentina by Javier Mascherano. For Italy Andrea Pirlo proves that a player with few specifically defensive gifts can also play the part if he possesses a sound positional sense and a wonderful passing ability, provided he is flanked by a terrier-like roving ball-winner such as Gennaro Gattuso.

Not all countries rely on such experts in the craft of providing midfield stability. Spain field Xavi of Barcelona and Xavi Alonso of Liverpool, neither of them defensively formidable. Like the Premiership La Liga puts a premium on attacking play and Spanish coaches tend to hope that artistry and momentum will prevail.

Most of the time they will. But those who saw the demolition of England's younger players by their French equivalents in the recent European Under-19 championship final will know that, at any age level, the system can be picked apart by real specialists, with the kind of embarrassing consequences that were repeated during Wednesday's second half.

To take this argument further is to reopen the question of the midfield diamond, which the players themselves persuaded the coach to abandon during Euro 2004. When things are going well, the flat midfield is certainly the alignment with which the English seem most comfortable. But unless Eriksson suddenly changes direction and unearths a player with Makelele's powers of concentration and application, they will remain vulnerable to the kind of attacks that dismantled them this week.

The player in question, a kind of high-octane version of Nicky Butt, is not immediately in view, mostly because English clubs do not seem to feel it necessary to identify and develop such a specific talent. But if Denmark can blow such holes in England's first-choice midfield on a night with nothing at stake, it is troubling to imagine what damage might be inflicted by the sort of teams that England aspire to meet in Germany next summer.