Is Steve McClaren Still in Charge?

August 20th, 2008 | by: Daryl |

Here’s tonight’s lineup:

James, Brown, A Cole, Ferdinand, Terry (Captain), Beckham, Barry, Lampard, Gerrard, Defoe, Rooney.

Look familiar? Steve McClaren could easily have picked that team. So could Sven for that matter.

Only vague bit of newness is the Defoe-Rooney partnership. Could work, really could. Defoe pushing up on the last man and Rooney dropping deep and playing in the support role. Fingers crossed.

But whatever happens tonight, it seems that the same old frustrations of being an England fan are going to continue:

Gerrard and Lampard tripping over each other
someone (either Barry or Gerrard) being asked to “do a job” on the left side of midfield
total lack of pace or ability to beat a man on either wing
John Terry doing lots of shouting and pointing as captain
the next David James mistake just waiting to happen and…
… my number one grievance, young players never getting a chance to crack the starting eleven.

Going to try and enjoy tonight’s game as much as possible, but I fear the future.

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http://epl.theoffside.com Rob

I haven’t seen the game, awaiting the highlights, but it sounds like we were pretty poor despite an ok result.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

“Pretty poor” pretty much sums it up Rob. There was no discernible difference between this England performance, and all the other frustratingly bad England performances of the last few years.
http://epl.theoffside.com Rob

Yeah just watched the highlights on ITV. Pretty depressing stuff mostly. We seemed to have the odd ok spell but other than that, just agonising really. Just saw Capello interviewed and he reckons we have trouble against teams that counter attack – probably because a) we don’t have a holding midfielder because Gerrard seemed to be playing Left Wing, and b) our defense, despite being class on paper, looked dreadful.