macbeth Posted 22 June 2006 Posted 22 June 2006 Dump Sven here!!! ideal place rotting vegetation ( swedes etc) its jolly dangerous to leave them around too long
Ric Flair Posted 22 June 2006 Posted 22 June 2006 I think we've got a chance DavieG, albeit it a slim one.. a) Right now we are still in the competition. b) Apart from Argentina and Ghana I've not been especially impressed with anyone (of those I've seen) . c) We have some good and some experienced players if by a miracle we ever use them in an effective manner collectively. d) Other teams are cautious of us (as well as vice-versa) so if they get in front, they might react like us and try to hold out thus giving us a chance even when we're unde pressure. e) We will surely improve as a team (that's more in hope than expectation). All that said I don't think Sven is the kind of inspiring type of manager our players need. His squad selection left us vulnerable, he is not a "to die for" person and whatever he wants underneath he just doesn't seem to have the personality to be anything other than cautious as a football manager. In a strange way football is like mountain sports in the end. To reach the top sooner or later you have to take risks and lay your professional life on the line. The question with Sven is does he have the bottle, not to mention the intelligence, to win?. Summed it up perfectly for me Thrac. At present it's hard to be optimistic about winning it, but it's still early days. Nobody wins the tournament in the group stages, but you can certainly lose it if you go out of the group stages which we haven't done. The Owen injury and the superb performance from fans hero Owen Hargreaves has now solved alot of problems. Gerrard and Lampard can now play in their preferred roles, which will be dangerous against any team. Joe Cole is having a field day cutting in from the left against teams who don't posses an agile and strong right sided defender, he's also in the form of his life and we are now seeing why he was hyped up as much as he was about 8 years ago. I'm not predicting anything, i've seen teams play pretty poorly for their standards and go on to do very well in tournaments both at international level and domestic level. If we go out, we go out. It's no big surprise, but what would be nice now is for every England fan and the media to put our reservations on ice for the time being and really get behind the lads. I know the support out there for them is 1st class from England fans, but it needs to be replicated here starting by the media. They can slag them off all they like after the tournament, but right now we need complete and utter bias towards our nation. Not so much that we give our players too much confidence that might lead to complacence but i'm sure if we could fire them up, they'll deliver. It's not over yet. We have the easiest team in the second phase (although they won't be no pushovers) and then we have to step it up a gear or two. Holland or Portugal aren't unbeatable but they'll punish us if we defend like we did against Sweden. Both teams set out exactly how we will do with 1 striker and 2/3 attacking midfielders buzzing around behind the striker. With Neville coming back we will now have 2 good attacking full-back and if Beckham has a shocker then he should be replaced by Lennon to take teams apart in the closing stages. It's all about the Hargreaves, as I predicted before the Sweden game.
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