AAARRRGGGHH! It’s groundhog day again with England!
Nothing ever seems to change with the national team – hope and expectation, swiftly followed by disappointment.
I’m not going to come on here and blame McClaren because he’s not to blame – it’s the people who appointed him.
I could have told you little would change from the Eriksson era because McClaren is as spineless as the passionless Swede.
He came out, made his mark, dropped Beckham, and everyone thought – “hold on a minute he could change things here!”
But no it has been disappointment after disappointment. England haven’t played well since Rooney broke his foot in Euro 2004. What happens at club level when the team doesn’t perform? New players are brought in. So why not with England?
We do have a shortage of true world class players but there’s enough quality in the English game to swap things around and drop the so-called “stars”.
I watch enough football to know there are some decent English players but they never get a chance because they don’t play for the “big four”.
What it really needs is for McClaren to make a bold decision – drop Lampard and play players in the position they do well for their clubs.
Lennon got into the team on the back of performances on the right for Spurs – so why play him on the left?
Barry has been Villa’s best player so why play Carragher out of position in Barry’s role? It just doesn’t make sense!
No doubt England will stumble through to the Euro finals and do badly again and be hailed as brave failures but we don’t want that, we want it to change.
Teams like Northern Ireland can put four past Liechtenstein so why can’t we do it with Israel?
Against Andorra all the attacking players should be looking to score a hat-trick but I can’t see it.
To be an international manager you don’t need to be a good coach – just someone who can make the team gel and be tactically aware – Wenger will be the next manager and then, just maybe, we will see some improvement and the development of more young English players.
You can see why all the Premiership teams rely on creative foreign players because the English lads just aren’t up to it.
Come on England show some passion for the fans who spend all their time and money following the national side across the world.
Double-figures in Andorra would be a start.