The World Cup is underway and the media have already, on the basis of the performance against Paraguay, heavily criticised England and in particular, the tactics of Sven Goran Eriksson.
Is this justified?
In my humble opinion, yes it is. I think that Sven doesn’t actually have a clue about how to manage an international team. I certainly think he is tactically inept. From the squad selection through to his tactics, I think there is a compelling weight of argument that says that he doesn’t really know what he is doing.
Let’s look at the key points:
1. Picking Jenas and Hargreaves and not taking a fifth striker. This is already looking a poor move; a fully fit Jermain Defoe would have been ideal cover for an unfit and out of form Michael Owen and either Jenas or Hargreaves could have made way. I don’t think we need Carrick, Hargreaves and Carragher all sitting there with the ability to play a holding midfield role.
2. The fact that England team have never scored a second half goal under Eriksson in World Cup Final matches. This point to the fact that he is happy to sit onto a lead, as he tried to do in 2002 and in Portugal in 2004. This is not something that suits the English game and I would have thought he would have realised this by now.
3. Sven’s inability to get Lampard and Gerrard to form an effective partnership in midfield. Two of the world’s best central midfielders often look lost in the middle of the park. Sometimes your best team doesn’t involve your best players, something that Sven can’t seem to grasp.
4. The gaps that appear between midfield and attack. The defence will, when defending a lead, take up far too deep a position causing the midfield to drop back and then leave too much space between them and the strikers.
5. Too much reliance on long ball football and not enough retention of possession seems to be a disease throughout the team.
6. Pulling Michael Owen back for corners. Why? Leave him up the pitch so that it means the opposition have to leave players further up the field and also gives us a threat up front on the counter-attack.
7. The bizarre substitutions; a national newspaper listed them recently and there is not many of those substitutions that any football fan will agree with.
8. Messing around with tactics in the build up games. The bloke has had FIVE YEARS in the job to work out a set of tactics and different systems, so why start mucking around with them three games before the start of the World Cup?
I think that any manager of a football team, club or international, should be able to list these issues out, like I have and then work out effective ways of solving them. If I can call it, then surely you would expect someone being paid £4,000,000 a year to be able to do the same?
The other issue is that it seems that Steve McLaren is willing to go along with all these substitutions and has virtually no say. If I was the England manager elect, I’d try and at least get Sven to sit down and listen but then maybe he agrees? If he does, it doesn’t bode well for the future.
England will get no further than the 1/4 finals so for anyone thinking we can win the World Cup, I suggest you think again. We have a lot of good players, but we have a joke of a manager.