As we have all come to expect England's performance against France last night was meet with much criticism , "Capello gets French lesson" (BBC), "Fabio Capello's experimental England gets swept aside by resurgent France." (Guardian). Some of this criticism may be deserved but much of it is premature and the idea that the future of English football is on the verge of slipping into mediocrity at international level is absurd, these players have played one match against a team with a lot more experience and better players, for now.
I thought that Henderson was good, he did what he was asked to do and moved the ball about, he covered a lot of ground, was happy to help out in the defence and had a bit of bite in midfield.
Gibbs was ok, nothing spectacular, he had a few nice runs but the final ball wasn't good enough, but that's what you'd expect seeing as he hasn't seen much first team football because of Clichy and being injured.
Carroll didn't get the right kind of service, simple as.
I thought Micah Richards was immense when he came on, not a single attack down the right by the french that I can remember, and he looked good going forward.
Barry was boring, Ferdinand solid as was Jagielka once he was moved into the middle. Foster could have done more to stop the goal but it happens sometimes. I was a bit dissapointed with Walcott but that was due to other reasons that I'll talk about later. Gerrard was his usual self and looked decent.
What really got to me was the system the team were playing, not the formation, but what they did once they got the ball. If you've got someone like Carroll up front you can play it long, but with the players we have on the wings surely we should be crossing from the final third.
Why did it take so long for us to get crosses into the box? I just don't get why Capello sets up the team with our wingers cutting inside, its just stupid, Walcott should take on the man go down the line and cross, then Carroll gets a real opportunity to score, which he didn't other wise. This works fine for Walcott, but Milner, why was he playing wing? He shouldn't be playing there IMO he doesn't have the pace to take on Sagna so it was a complete miss match and a bad piece of selection. Once Young and Johnson came on they looked bright, especially Young he tracked back took on his man and looked really committed, but again we have the problem where they cut inside the cross on their weaker foot. Why does he make them do this!!!!!? The defenders can see the ball coming all the way making it easier to get into position and head it away, Carroll has to be looking behind him to see the ball, it doesn't make sense, if he's running on to it he can shake his marker and get real power on it, he never had the chance to do this because it was the right kind of delivery.
Also what we need is the attacking midfielder to break into the box to pick up knock downs, Milner didn't do this, Wilshere, Lampard or Gerrard would have.
And why could we win any second balls? Once the french defence headed it away they won posestion, we need someone to pick up headers coming out the opposition.
I saw an excellent example of this when I went to see Belgium play Austria in the last round of Euro qualifiers. Belgium are a team that are on the up, there is no doubt about that, they have some fantastic young players coming through I was most keen to get a look at several players including Steven Dufour, Axel Witsel, Romelu Lukaku and Edin Hazard. However there was one play that caught my eye who I was expecting very little from, a young man named Jonathan Legear, he plays for Anderlect on the right wing and this is the position he occupied for his country, and he did what a right winger should do. He hugged the touchline and took on his man. He did this every time the ball came to him and caused havoc in the Austrian defence, they simple couldn't handle him even though he doesn't have outstanding pace.
This is something we should see our players doing for their country, our wingers have some real quality so will cause problems to full backs, which may result in teams doubling up against them giving the likes of Gerrard more space. The only players who seemed willing to run at the opposition last night were Young, Johnson and Carroll. Both Johnson, and especially Young, caused some real problems to the French full backs because of their shear pace once the get moving, the same should be said of Walcott but he is either lacking the confidence to do so, or has been told by his manager to run the channels which hasn't worked against a strong international defence in a while.
All this doom and gloom is over the top, they're a good bunch of players and could have played better if they were set up different.
They weren't and I don't think they ever will be, not under Capello at least. So things need changing, but who can do it? Redknapp is the favourite and the obvious choice, but other managers should also be looked at. Although its a long shot man I'd like to see in charge, who would deffinatly keep things interesting, is Ian Holloway who with Blackpool is only thinking about doing one thing, and that's scoring goals which is surely the best way to win a football match.
Either way change isn't coming under Capello, so change should come for Capello.
