England vs Greece Post Match Comments
What are your thoughts of the beginning of the McClaren Era?
posted by United We Stand @ 4:24 PM
Lakenheath Old Boys
We are all former students at Lakenheath High School and other public schools in East Anglia. We were in school in the 70s and 80s and drank deeply from the well of British culture of those decades - the pints, the telly, and of course the footie!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
What are your thoughts of the beginning of the McClaren Era?
Lakenheath Old Boys
We are all former students at Lakenheath High School and other public schools in East Anglia. We were in school in the 70s and 80s and drank deeply from the well of British culture of those decades - the pints, the telly, and of course the footie!
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6 Comments:
Just finished the tape. The first half was alright. The Greeks were probably worse than the Trinis from the summer and we were all over them. But the second half was the same story. The Greeks didn't suddenly get better, the English packed it in and started looking feeble again.
The performance in the first half reminded me of the strategy a lot of teams took to this summer--a balls-out attack right from the off to get as far ahead as possible so that they could take the foot off the gas in the second half. That's what these 3 of the 4 goals looked like.
But in the second, were it not for a very solid perfomance from Kirkland and two lucky clearances off the line from Cashley, we'd have just shaded the result at 4-2 or even 4-3. And that's not good enough.
Did you think that Terry was good enough? He scored, but his defending would have been caught out by a better set of forwards. Hargreaves did pretty well when he wasn't clattering the Greeks to the floor 30 yards from his goal. Lamps scored a fluke, but he was clumsily knocking Greeks to the floor too.
Downing did better than I expected but I was disappointed with Gerrard who plays on the right at L'pool, but was really quiet tonight. Defoe was poor. He didn't hold the ball up, his approach runs were all up a blind alley, his 1 shot was really off, and his passing was shocking. Sven's vindicated on the subject of Defoe on tonight's form.
Rio played really well and I liked him showing up in the midfield as a target option from time to time. Hargreaves dropped into his space every time so you must be drooling thinking that he may sign for you.
Crouch was great again. He's so awkward it's untrue but he holds the ball up, wins set pieces and gets on the end of things. 8 in 12 matches is a really great return.
Hate to say it but Cashley looked good. Saved our bacon with his double clearance and his runs forward gave the Greeks all they could handle.
Don't get me wrong, we won and gave the Greeks the slap they deserved for being really bad. But there's something limp about England in the second half that I would like to see sorted out.
I forgot Grandad Neville who also impressed in his defending and in his runs forward. None of the Greeks tried to run by him it has to be said. So even as good as he was tonight, Luke Young really should be wearing his shirt. Time's up.
I wanted to see more of Richardson who seems to really shine when the going's a bit soft. Against that shower of Greeks, with more time, he could have had a really good day. Hope he gets his chance against Andorra. They're the kind of lightweights that he really goes after.
Lennon? Looks like defenders have been studying the videotape. Not even the
Greeks gave him the inside and most of the time, he only came away with a throw for all his fancyness.
Robbo? Well, he really could have spent the match texting his mates, having a cuppa, couldn't he? Can't believe he wouldn't have been up to the task tonight if called upon though. Kirkland was more impressive only because he actually had to make a save.
I haven't watched the match yet - I'm stuck in Gainesville til the end of the week - so I'm curious about Gerrard and Hargreaves. Did they both start, Gerrard on the right and Hargreaves holding? If so, how did they get on? Those two were the main changes to the system to my mind.
I haven't seen the game yet, but here's the main point - 4-0 against the current European champions. Not bloody, bad.
Oh, I know that the naysayers will say that the Greeks really shouldn't have won Euro 2004, but, here's the thing - they bloody did win it! And now we've slaughtered them by four goals in the first game under McClaren - and without Rooney, Owen and Joe Cole - three almost certain starters.
As you can tell, I'm pleased.
And so was I for 45 minutes. If it were only that we took our foot off the gas in a friendly, then OK. At 4-0, you've proven the point and you don't want to risk injury.
But what you'll see is that along with dropping the tempo, we were really sloppy. The midfield suddenly opened up large exploitable holes, marking at corners, set pieces and otherwise became really sloppy, and in particular, Terry, Hargreaves, and Lamps started pushing Greeks over gifting the Greeks excellent free kick opportunities.
Look at it this way. The guy who won the bloody European Championship for the Greeks with that header? Unmarked at corners, every time. Now he's not some bloke that no one knows. He's got a flippin' medal for winning the Euros and he bloody scored the injury time winner. With a header from a corner, if my memory is correct. Was John Terry a lad in diapers when this event occurred? No, he was not and he should know who that bloke is and mark him at bloody corners.
Similarly, someone who has played in Germany for Bayern shouldn't spend 45 minutes knocking people over just because it's a friendly and he's not likely to be booked or sent off for repeatedly doing it. He should have a reserve of technique that doesn't include whacking everyone in sight to set up a Beckham range free kick for the opposition.
Fat Frank shouldn't lumber around the pitch in the 55th minute looking more shagged than Crouchy when Crouchy is running from side-line to side-line for 70-80 minutes.
And may I also add that I long for the days when England played a bunch of no-hopers and every English player looked to score as many as possible and didn't decide to have a kip in the second half. Remember Malcolm MacDonald and his 5 against Cyprus? Or Mick Channon and his 4 against Turkey. Greece were bad enough that if we could score 4 in the first half, we should have scored an equal number in the second half. And no-one seemed interested in adding more than 4.
Yeah, 4-0 is a thrashing, but it would have been so much better if it had been a 90 minute effort.
You know, I've got a similar story, Trev, but regarding Nixon's resignation speech. I was a mad keen Watergate scandal fan back in 1974 and begged my parents to let me stay up to see Tricky Dick resign. It was on at midnight. They weren't having it and packed me off to bed with the promise that they'd wake me for it. Of course, you can imagine the end of that story.
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