A Savage Solution for England's Woes

Claudius

Robbie Savage is not the best pundit out there, but he does throw out an interesting, if not predictable, idea in the wake of United's triumph over Arsenal. That United's English boys should form the backbone of an English team.

Says Savage

For these remaining qualifiers, he should throw the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Tom Cleverley, Danny Welbeck, Ashley Young and Wayne Rooney in with established names like Joe Hart and Ashley Cole, making room for Jack Wilshere and Steven Gerrard when they are fit.

Mirror article

Would Savage's formula work for England? Are there sufficient quality players outside United that such an approach would be to the detriment of the national team. Discuss.

Klaus

They should just spend less time dwelling on the ball and focus on playing it through midfield instead of bypassing it. It's not rocket science. There's no reason why players like Gerrard, Johnson and Wilshere shouldn't be able to play with just one or two touches on the ball. You just need to drill it in them and the rest will come. Before they can do that they need to fire Capello though. He lost his marbles a long time ago. Basically, improving the English national team would be the easiest job in football. The players are already good individually. They're just underperforming because they're not playing as a team.

Ricky1985

Savage is a bit of a plonka isn't he.

Biggus

He's a twonk.
There was nothing special about those Utd players, it wasn't even a full strength team, it just that we were so fucking shit.

Captain

The big problem there is that four of those players haven't "won everything in sight", they have won nothing. The remaining three are already thrown "in with established names".

Claudius

I think he has a point about building a national squad around an established team. The Spanish team instantly took on a lot of Barca's character due to the men controlling midfield.

The problem for England is this: United has a lot of English players but their quality is concentrated in foreign bodies. Apart from Rooney, the most important United players tend to be Vidic, Nani, Valencia, Berbatov, Evra and Cheetos. Young is in the picture now, but England just wouldn't be able to bring the same quality to bear, especially in attack. in place of these guys, you have Downing, Defoe, Crouch.

Finally, you would lose the coach. United's current style just isn't akin to anything I've seen Capello do at club level. It would be hard to imagine such a fluid offense under him.

Captain

Caligula wrote:
I think he has a point about building a national squad around an established team. The Spanish team instantly took on a lot of Barca's character due to the men controlling midfield.

England don't have a team like Barcelona, so that's out of the window.

Timbob

People in this country need to realise that we just dont have the players to be anything but an outside bet for major tournaments.

Captain

And with Capello in charge, we leave half of the good ones at home anyway.

Claudius

Which players would you like to see more of?

Ricky1985

Capi's probably talking about the travesty that was the selection of players at last year's World Cup.

Timbob

Only 2 England managers in my lifetime that had a proper, cogent vision of how England could win a major tournament; Venables and Hoddle.

Captain

And Hoddle had what was arguably the worst selection of players in 20 odd years.

Ricky1985

Tim wrote:
Only 2 England managers in my lifetime that had a proper, cogent vision of how England could win a major tournament; Venables and Hoddle.

You sound just like my Dad! 😆

Timbob

Oooookkkaaayyy....

Ricky1985

Considering he's a big Arsenal fan, he never stops banging on about Venables and Hoddle, and how great they were/are, when we talk England. It always cracks me up.

Timbob

😆

Your dad sounds like a wise man. 🙂

Biggus

Tim wrote:
People in this country need to realise that we just dont have the players to be anything but an outside bet for major tournaments.

It's true Tim, England are more overrated by the English than by foreigners.
They usually get a piss easy qualifying group and twat some countries that have only existed for 20 years and are then built up by the xenophobic media for the big fall.

Claudius

With Wilshere on board, I think England have enough players to actually go out and do a job in a major tournament. I would have a little bit of belief in a formation such as

Young ----- Rooney ----- Walcott
------------ Wilshere --------------
----- Parker ---------- Barry ------
Cole -- Cahill -- Terry -- Richards
------------- Hart -------------------

The problem for England is that apart from center back, there is very little quality back-up for those players. But amongst European teams, only Spain can comfortably say their team is better. The national teams of Germany and Netherlands do not have perfect starting line-ups.

Ricky1985

I'd say there's only 2, maybe 3 , proven, top class players in that team, and a good few players who just aren't good enough for the very top level.