egafd.com

I wouldn't much mind if the Germans won, they have been a very good side to watch. Frrance v Spain was like watching paint dry. England got exactly as far as they should have, what can you expect with a moose like Milner in the national team?

Maybe if the players spent more time training and less time getting stupid haircuts things would be better.

We weren't good enough but I think we have a few positives.
At least Hodgson made us look a solid hard to beat team.
Joe Hart will only get better for the experience of another tourament and I think Lescott was probably our best defender over the four games. There might be life after Ferdinand.
Although they didn't play too badly maybe it is time for Terry, Parker and possibly Gerrard to stand aside.
And maybe we have to forget about the world cup and even the next euro finals and build on the younger players. If the media would let the FA and manager get away with it.
Hart, Richards, Walker, Cahill, Lescott, Baines, Chamberlain,Walcott, Welbeck, Carroll, Henderson, Wilshere, Rodwell,Jones,Smalling, and a few others that I am sure will come through the ranks at premier clubs.

Here's hoping anyway.

People blaming Rooney are ridiculous. He's England's best player by a mile. Before the Ukraine game he came out and specifically stated he couldn't win this on his own. i.e, I need a team around me.

All I've heard is:

Graham Taylor is a turnip head.
Southgate's a donkey by missing that penalty.
Phil Neville's a donkey for letting that goal between his legs.
Beckham's an idiot for being sent off.
Keegan's tactically inept.
Eriksson's made the England camp a wag holiday.
Beckham is too old.
Mclaren is a crap manager!
Capello doesn't understand the English game.
Rooney didn't turn up.

Notice the pattern here? It's called 'looking for a scapegoat'.

Fact is, we treat our most technically gifted players with contempt. Hoddle was our best player through the eighties yet Peter Reid and many others got in front of him. Le Tissier was an English genius through the nineties and hardly got a kick. Scholes has been England's best player since Gascoigne but got shoved to the left wing before being dropped to accommodate Lampard and Gerrard........which never worked. And now I hear calls to drop Rooney for Andy Carroll!

The English applaud a tackle or a 60 yard pass over a 5 minute spell of keep-ball. That's why everyone loved Rooney when he ran around like a maniac at 100 miles an hour, and hate him now he takes his time to build up play. It's why they liked Lampard's bursts into the box and Stevie Gs surging past players and 60 yard hollywood passes but turned their noses up at Carrick's possession-style play and Scholes' one-twos and quick switching of play. It's the Roy of the Rovers mentality. If Rooney can't do something special every time he gets the ball, he's shit. If Beckham can't score a free-kick every game, he's shit. If Le Tissier can't beat 3 men every time he gets the ball he's shit. We pick our best player and demand they play like Roy of the Rovers.

I was watching the game with my brother in law and a friend from Uni, who's Spanish, he was amazed at Glen Johnson's lack of positional play and was actually laughing at one point. He was very impressed at Welbeck's movement and lack of panic in tight spaces and said Welbeck was England's best player at half-time. In today's papers Johnson got an average rating of 8/10, Welbeck 5/10. That says it all. We don't appreciate the little things. If it doesn't look exciting and get our bums off our seats it's shit.

The fact is in the Premier League we have the foreign players to do the under-appreciated stuff, leaving ours to do the bits we take notice of more. Put our players together and no one does the little things right. When an Italian had the ball he nearly always had two or three options with his passing. When an English player had the ball he had one option at best. Makes our play predictable.

Every team knows how to beat England. You press them high up the pitch. Because we have a shit touch and no movement we constantly give the ball away and our attacking players have to come deeper and deeper to get the ball. They're then in positions they can't really hurt the opposition, are crowed out and the play breaks down. Rinse and repeat.

And seriously, Roy: 4-4-2 in 2012? What other nation plays 4-4-2 in Fifa's top 20 ranked teams?

I just heard Hodgson say words to the effect of, "Well we did OK all things considering!" So there you go, business as usual!

Whats really galling is sides who I loath like Chelsea actually win trophies by being boring and defensive and generally crap...but when its England it dont happen!

I saw today that something like 23m people watched the match against Italy last night. It was apparently the biggest TV audience for anything in eight years. Had we won last night and got into the semi's, whoever it was against, would probably have drawn an audience of 25 or 30m. BUT, this semi final match would have been against our arch-rivals Germany! That would have been one of the most watched sporting events of all time. Sadly we are not now playing them but Italy are instead - this Thursday. I actually want Germany to win, as a kind of revenge for Italy beating us. Go on Germany, you can do it!

Imagine if all 23,000,000 people had all shouted at the top of their voices all at the same time, "Useless tossers" if you would have heard it all over the UK?

Sam Slater wrote:




Well even Hodgson has said (admittedly in a more subtle and roundabout way, but the message was clear enough) that Rooney underperformed, so take it up with him.

The undeniable fact is that Rooney has had one decent tournament finals (Euro 2004 until he got injured) and has been abject in the three he's played in since.

- Eric

Then you, my friend, should contemplate how England regularly fail to either find a place, or even if they do, get the best out of their most technically gifted players.

As I've said already, the list is long: Hoddle, Waddle, Barnes, Le Tissier, Mcmanaman, Scholes, Beckham, Gerrard and now Rooney. All did brilliantly for their clubs both home and abroad. Hoddle could have graced any top European side. Waddle is worshipped in Marseilles. Le Tissier was a genius. Mcmanaman was one of the Galacticos. Zidane said Scholes was the best player he'd ever played against and Xavi and Iniesta modelled their game on him. Rooney is England's top champions league scorer of all time at 26 and has a hatrick to his name in the San Siro. Wenger and Mourihno said he is the best English player since Gascoigne. Yet they all failed to shine in and England jersey.

And we've already had the discussion on Rooney's past tournament failures. Apart from this one he's broken metatarsals in the run up to every other one before. He's been unfit, ill-prepared but crow-barred in anyway because his replacements would be even worse fully fit.

Make Rooney your scapegoat if you want. In a few more years it'll be some other player who won't live up to your standards. Wilshire perhaps, or Welbeck - maybe McEachran. It's just less taxing to the brain to point your finger at one player and say "It's his fault!" England just weren't good enough. That's the gist of it, really.

Teams beat England every single time by pressing them high up the pitch. This is because we prefer hard-tackling, fists-to-the-pump defenders rather than ball-playing centre halves. They're less comfortable on the ball and don't even trust their own passing, which is why it nearly always goes back to the keeper. England's midfielders are usually the box-to-box, Roy of the Rovers types that try too many hollywood passes, lung-busting surges into the box and long shots. They're lazy in moving into space to help out colleagues in tight areas and take too long in getting the ball under control which slows our game down and makes it easier for the opposition to press the ball. It is this that causes our attacking players to come deeper and deeper to get it, and if they do, they're in areas of the pitch where they can't hurt the opposition without doing something special, and more likely to get crowded out in a more congested midfield. Also the lack of movement, as I've already alluded to, doesn't help them laying off the ball to build anything meaningful anyway. They either concede possession, or if they do lay it off to someone, the bad touches and lack of options means the ball ends up back at the keeper for a big punt upfield......where no one is because our attackers have come so deep to get the ball.

Disagree?

We have one Spaniard with a British passport. We just didn't take him: