Quite. At this point I should be having great fun rooting for an England disaster to see off McLaren once and for all, but it’s the absolute headless-chicken incompetence of the FA that put him there, and there’s no chance whatsoever of them managing to employ someone decent even should he by some miracle get the sack. Plus we’d then be paying the salaries of three separate managers due to the incomprehensible deal offered to Eriksson after his little penis excursion, so we probably can’t even afford anyone proper any more. So I’m stuffed. I can’t support England, because it’s like supporting gout, but I can’t even enjoyably support the other side, because I can’t see a rock bottom for us to hit.
For those saying that this is a matter of inflated expectations: well, partially, but there are many fans who are realistic about our prospects, yet still upset. Why? Because the team so rarely even bother to turn up. Of course we can’t expect to be winning every tournament, but is it too much to ask to see just one encouraging performance? I really can’t remember the last time we played well collectively; not even for half a match. The Israel match was quite literally the most boring match of football I’ve ever seen, and it’s entirely representative of our play. The debate about our play never seems to get more involved than the formation, which I suppose isn’t surprising, given most of our players’ apparent lack of desire to move from the patch of turf they’re standing on at the start. McLaren’s initial gameplans (even when he does somehow manage to drop Lampard) have flaws a five-year-old could point out, and it’s utterly, utterly apparent that he thinks “Plan B” refers only to the contraceptive.
What are you not getting about this? England always qualified under Eriksson, England may not qualify for Euro 2008. One is clearly better than the other. That doesn’t mean that Eriksson shouldn’t have been sacked a long time ago–it just means that anyone can run England better than McLaren.
Besides the 5-1 rout of Germany, I’m not coming up with anything since the Terry Venables era, and even that was filled with some pretty scrappy performances.
This is the second time in my life I’m finding a big of myself actively hoping England doesn’t qualify for a tournament, the first being Euro 2000 to get rid of Keegan, who had even less of a clue than MacLaren. This time it’s not just to get MacLaren out, but to give the whole FA and the players a huge wake up call that something is seriously wrong with the way the team is being picked and played. Why Lampard and Rooney are continually picked depsite mediocre-at-best performances seriously needs to be addressed. It almost seems like players are getting picked by how many times their names appear in The Sun…
I agree with most of the comments excorciating England management, but it’s a little unfair to pick on Rooney. He’s young, but he’s one of the top five scorers in the Premiership right now and the other four don’t quite qualify for England.
Also, I’d like to take a moment to curse your first-born child for forcing me to defend a fucking Manc cunt.
At Euro 96? That was in the Venables era, so no, I didn’t forget it. In fact that, and the Scotland match in the same tourny were two of the ones that I was thinking of from back then.
My point is that England is one of the top football nations in the world. There is something seriously wrong when a team like that does not even qualify. That is my point
That’s my point, too. FTR, I feel the same way about the US. Would they have qualified from UEFA in 2006? Probably not, given their WC performance, but it really pissed me off when Bruce Arena defended himself by saying “I got them through qualification, and that’s the extent of what I’m expected to do here”. No it’s not–most college teams could probably qualify from CONCACAF if they wanted it badly enough. For a team to be rated #5 in the world and then play like a volunteer youth team at the world stage, whining and insulting each other like a bunch of petulant 8-year-olds the whole way, smacks of the complacent elitism of American soccer that makes our country’s sports establishment dislike it so.