McClaren out, happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the US

The English FA let Steve McClaren go today, for failing to qualify for Euro 2008. I’m glad to see that they also canned that spiv Venables, in a rare case of the tikka-tinged charlatan being held accountable for his non-performance.

I don’t take much pleasure in seeing McClaren go – he was promoted above his capabilities and tried his  best, but given that useless shower of players, it’s no surprise that they didn’t qualify. Whoever replaces McClaren needs to swing the axe a bit – and Gerrard would be as good a starting point as any.

Evidently Fabio Capello has indicated that he’s interested; plainly he wants to get back to work because he’d have it all do with that useless showe of playas.

If you happen to be in the US, enjoy your Thanksgiving. If not, you can be thankful that our political and business leaders are too busy stuffing themselves with turkey etc., to cause any problems for the rest of us today. Most of them won’t go back to “work” until Monday, so enjoy the peace and quiet while you can.

7 – 1? For real?

Holy crap. I can’t quite believe that the team I watched over the weekend – who spent 90 minutes misfiring against Portsmouth – put Roma to the sword, figuratively speaking of course. That was a beating of monumental proportions, as noted in articles like these:

Champions League: Manchester United 7 – 1 Roma (Manchester Utd win 8-3 on agg) | Match Reports | Guardian Unlimited Football

Guardian Unlimited: Sport blog: Ronaldo plays the lead on night of European records

Seventh heaven in Theatre of Dreams | Man Utd | Premiership | Football | Sport | Telegraph

Since I didn’t see it, I can’t add anything, but I would like to give a shout-out to the Italian press for their measured response to a shelling on a scale rarely seen since the Somme:

‘An epochal beating that Italian football has never suffered at the hands of the English’ | News | Guardian Unlimited Football

“Last night was an epochal beating that Italian football has never previously suffered at the hands of the English,” says Roma fan and columnist Candido Cannavò. “Now I run to father Dante to find out what circle of Hell my beloved Roma has fallen into: maybe that of the proud and vainglorious. Conceding three goals in eight minutes could only have happened to a squad that thought it was divine.”

<snip>

Corriere Della Sera’s Mario Sconcerti, on the other hand, is too stunned to even draw conclusions. “No technical explanation holds,” he says. “Roma simply arrived second to every ball and to every English move. Experienced players, of an international class like Chivu, Mexès, Panucci and De Rossi, suddenly became fragile like debutants. They didn’t understand Manchester’s trajectories, they didn’t find the ball. We are among the lauded people, we are among the best teams in the world. We are in a time of theoretical equilibrium in football. A technical savaging like this leaves one genuinely stupefied.”

Reason 327 as to Why England are Mince Right Now

via web reports, blogs and podcasts, the ire of the average england fan after the loss to spain is on full display.  it is aimed most commonly at steve mcclaren with the occasional shot at phil neville (hasn’t he suffered enough by being in the shadow of gary?) and the FA.  the complaint aimed is simple – why are we not getting world class results with world class players?

there are countless ways to answer this question – youth development, conditioning, tactical mistakes – all valid and all needing to be addressed, but i think there is one simpler issue that will make inroads to solving some bigger problems – intelligent team selection.

of all the continental habits that need to be taken up, this would be priority number one.  too often players are selected on reputation and club status, with less importance placed on performance and actual team needs.   this is the root of england’s ineffectiveness. 

underperforming stars are chosen before over-performing journeymen.  this breeds complacency and entitlement as well as choking the vibrancy from the team.  without honest competition for playing time, motivation to succeed starts to disappear.  maintaining a level of competition in the squad is the only way to improve performances.   injuries notwithstanding, there shouldn’t be a single position in the england squad that is not open to be taken by someone else.  yet under mcclaren just as under sven, there are particular players (lampard, ferdinand, cole, gerrard) essentially given complete immunity.

this player immunity, in addition to creating complacency, floods the team with certain skill sets, while starving it of others.  there are players that possibly have the skill that could improve the overall effectiveness of the team.  there are always constant shouts for giving young players there shot.  when played, their general inexperience often shines through.  the players who need to be given a shot are the older league playerswith lots of top flight experience.  perhaps they may not be the “future” of england, but in playing well currently, they are the “present.”  denny landzaat is a fine example.  not a world beater (as evidenced by his playing for wigan) but he served a purpose in van basten’s starting eleven.  he was a journeyman player in the dutch league and didn’t get his start for the dutch team until he was almost thirty, but he was effective.

if one looks around the english league, there are good players (dare i say…utility players) with the skills that the current star studded england team lack as a whole.  

i don’t claim to be a brilliant manager or tactician, but take for example gavin mccann and scott parker.  two overlooked players who are the current leading english tacklers.   their ball winning skills amongst english players are second to none this season.  relative to the amount of tackling, they have a low rate for conceding fouls (less or equal to twice the fouls conceded for twice the tackles made by lampard and gerrard). 

mccann and parker were given 1 and 3 caps, respectively, at the age of 23.  now at the age of 29 and 26, they have 6 and 4 years of top flight experience since they made their appearance.  experience, utility and performance…concepts that should play into national selection

the failure of the gerrard/lampard midfield stands testament to the need to adjust team selection to skills required.  if you are going to have a central midfield of two players, they cannot display the same skill set.  granted, you need both midfielders to be balanced –  creating options and not enabling your opposition to control the midfield by marking out a role/skill specific player, but every head chef needs a sous-chef.  a skilled midfielder can perform both roles, but favor one in particular.  

england needs a midfielder who can push forward when his partner is pinned back, but instinctively drops back the rest of the time. having to central midfielders who instinctively move forward is disastrous.

potentially in mccann and parker you have too players who can stifle opposition play in the midfield allowing for forward progress to be made for an attacking midfield partner.  whether they both possess the ability to go forward (parker has more potential in that respect) i don’t know.  problem is, neither does mcclaren, because, despite their potential, he doesn’t even pick them.

this is all without getting into my hero, joey barton, who was only given 16 minutes to prove his international worth.

this should not be taken as an attempt to demand that particular players be called on, but that the manner in which players are selected be changed.  currently, the same bunch are constantly picked, only to be replaced by inexperienced young players who end up taking huge dents to their confidence.  currently, good eligible players with lots of utility and top flight experience languish in the nether regions of international football, because they lack star power.  currently, that system isn’t working.

Calcutta Cup: Ordinary service resumes

Another year, another loss at Twickenham for Scotland in the Calcutta Cup — the fourth in a row in which England have scored 40 or more points, to boot. After last year’s win at Murrayfield, and given the appalling run of form for English rugby over the last 9 months or so, the Scots had reason to believe that they were in with a shout of a win… until Johnny Wilkson set them straight…

The Scotsman – Sport – Wilkinson masterclass prolongs Scots’ torment at Twickenham

In fact, an 11-minute period of the game was where it was all decided: the 48th to 59th minutes. It was a point in the game where Wilkinson, Harry Ellis, England’s revitalised scrum-half, and the dominating home pack peaked and scored 20 points to extract all the juice from the teams’ opening RBS Six Nations Championship match.

Damn the man! Who does he think he is, making an unexpected return from injury like that? And unexpected it was:

First round leaves pundits with egg on their face | International | Rugby Union | Sport | Telegraph

If you recall, there was a huge weight of opinion, though, smugly, it did not include me, that said Wilkinson should not have been selected; this included former England coach Andy Robinson and former captain Will Carling, and no one, repeat no one, predicted the almost flawless display from Wilkinson. The very fact that his reintroduction was virtually seamless is testament to what an extraordinary performance it was.

Sure, Scotland did not put him under any pressure, but that was squarely down to a powerful effort from a dominant England pack and in particular the tight five in the scrum and the back row in the loose In any event, for Wilkinson not to show the slightest rust was simply phenomenal.

And yes, Scotland were made to look poor, but did anyone suggest that before the game? No, the Scots believed it was possible to win. The hardiest of England supporters thought it would be a tough game, with a narrow home-team victory being acceptable as the first step on the road to rehabilitation.

Argh. However, since Scotland hasn’t won at Twickenham since before my voice broke (26 years in non-self-referential calendars), it’s hard to say that this result was entirely surprising.

Per usual, there are recriminations amongst Scots supporters about poor coaching, team selection, lack of fight, and so on. There are some decent players on the team, so perhaps they can yet set about a couple of decent results… or at least not losing to Italy.

Speaking a different language…

I’m aware of the Ashes going on at the moment, Down Under, because it’s all over the British papers I read online and the BBC Podcasts that I listen to. My maternal grandfather used to both watch cricket on BBC 2 and listen to coverage on the radio, which is unusual for a Scot. As a result, all I need to hear is the opening few bars of Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MGs, and it’s 1978 and I’m in my grandparents’ living room.

Anyway, last night I thought I’d try listening to the Five Live coverage over ‘t Interweb and it was much as I remembered: a lot of talk about nothing in particular, and then some commentary following an audible crack of the bat in the background. Actually, that’s not true, in the 70’s they didn’t blather on as much.

It’s a different style of writing too. Here’s a snippet from the BBC’s story about yesterday’s play:

They resumed on 51-2 but Australia’s seamers made life very difficult for Paul Collingwood and Andrew Strauss and sure enough the breakthrough did not take long in coming.

In the fourth over of the morning Collingwood, on 11, was enticed into a loose shot by Glenn McGrath and the chance was snaffled by Hayden at gully.

And then from the Guardian:

If there had been a gruesome predictability about England’s loss of two wickets in the final hour of play on Thursday night, there was a measure of surprise about the first wicket to fall yesterday. Paul Collingwood, whose double century and limpet-like 22 had won such admiration at Adelaide, went in the fourth over of the morning, playing a shot of doubtful provenance to a shortish ball from Glenn McGrath and perishing to a fine gully catch by Hayden.

I mean, I get the general idea because I understand a little about the game, but still. It’s like reading reports on rugby, it seems like there’s still some kind of class difference about who writes about it,  or at least in how they address their audience. Richard Williams of Guardian (for the quote is his) certainly seems to have upped the ante a bit compared to his footy coverage… perhaps I’m baked, but it seems that way to me anyway.

common sense on football managers

On the one hand, I don't really care if England has a decent manager. On the other hand, watching the debacle over picking the new one eventually moved me from being entertained to being stunned at the level of denial over poor results from English managers.

Here's a rare example of common sense from cheery chappy Alan Hansen:

What England want in an ideal world is a manager that has been competing in the Champions League, who has been winning the Premiership.

But unfortunately, those managers are all foreigners.

It is a sort of catch-22 situation.

People talk about England managers having big-time experience, but that will only happen if the big clubs take a chance on them.

And I do not think that is going to happen in my lifetime.

Steve McClaren is the new England coach

I can't do it. I can't feign any interest in this story. I can't bring myself to take an easy swing at Brian Barwick for being such a half-wit. I just don't care.

And it doesn't matter anyway, because without Rooney they are not going to get past the quarter finals.

normal service resumes (or, another FA balls-up)

I'd have mentioned it earlier, but I've been too busy chuckling to mention much about the wholesale demise of Big Phil Scolari as the heir apparent for the England manager job.