Monday, October 16, 2006
The Ginger Sven
Just a few weeks ago, I warned of a false dawn under McClaren. The 2 qualifying matches in October at home to Macedonia and away at Croatia seem to have re-enforced my claims.Macedonia came to what is hopefully the last match at Old Trafford for a while and set out their stall to work hard and catch us on the break. The line-up was familiar although Rio was out so Ledley King came in. I like King, he has never let England down and once again, he was one of the better players on view. Sadly, that wasn't much of a statement as we had to endure another 55 minutes of pure crap. England look slow, lethargic and void of ideas. Their keeper made a couple of saves and Gerrard hit the bar but that was really it. Macedonia had pace and worked hard.
Now you may have noticed I said "endure 55 minutes of pure crap". Thats because we left after 55 minutes. We'd had enough. It was another woeful performance, not really that different from the previous 3 matches. The problem was this time the opposition look determined and more importantly, we didn't win. It seems that so long as we win, a number of people don't want to look any further. 2 dropped points at home meant the honeymoon period for the Ginger Sven was over.
Afterwards, we were promised a better, more passionate performance in Zagreb in his first real test. Croatia are no mugs and while we struggled against Macedonia, they were busy sticking 7 past Andorra. Remember what I said last time about putting down a marker in the group in my previous entry !!!!
Anyway, so off we all went to Zagreb. Now this was Eastern Europe and watching football here is very different to places like Germany, Sweden, Holland etc. Violent fans and even more violent police are very much the order of the day. You have to have your wits about you. We arrived about 45 mins before kick-off and just got in before the police decided to close the gates. It has been documented about the trouble this cause with the police over-reacting to the extent the FA have filed a report with UEFA over the treatment of England supporters.
Personally, I felt one of the biggest crimes by the police was locking us in so we had to see all 90 minutes of the worst England performance I can remember for about....well, 4 days. Firstly, the formation changed and Downing was out....the one one bright spot. Now, I believe too much is written about formations. These players are top class and if they can't adapt to different formations, then they are even more stupid than I originally thought. We were subject to another substandard performance devoid of invention, pace, passion...all the ingredients you need for success. Croatia were hungry for the points and got them, the 2-0 scoreline condeming England to their worst qualifying defeat for 13 years. The players were booed off....and rightly so. We applauded the Croatia players as they left the field. They showed all the attributes our so called highly paid, world stars what it means to play for their country.
The police kept us locked in for an hour. Over the back of the stand, we could look down and see the players boarding the coach for their hasty escape. They can't have failed to hear the cries of "You're not fit to wear the shirt" and they aren't. Since we lost at home to Australia in 2002, we get about 1 decent performance every 12 months. That is unacceptable. Players are more concerned with their new cars, Champions League bonuses or royalties from their new books. Give me 22 players from Division 2 (The Championship) any day.
I don't actually mind if we lose but I do want to walk out of the stadium thinking we gave it everything. That feeling is something I experience far too infrequently. It will be interesting to see the response in Amsterdam against Holland in 4 weeks time.
