expensive rubbish.
The only good thing to come out of Saturday’s debacle against the scummy Portuguese is it sees the back of that £25 million waste of space Svennis and the end of the billboard poser…err…captain.
The quarter final was a game that neither team deserved to win, England had to play most of the game with 9 men as Lampard & Beckham obviously decided not to turn up again, only for 11 minutes between Lennon coming on for the useless Beckham and Rooney getting sent off did they have 10 players on the park.
And what a damn struggle it was to get Beckham off, as soon as the incident that caused his injury occurred Gary Neville motioned to the bench that Beckham had to be replaced but no again thinking of himself and not the team he signalled to his best chum that he could “run off” the torn achillies that’s going to keep him out for 6 weeks.
And as he sat on the sidelines crying you knew it had nothing to do with England’s fate but he could see it was the end for him, not only as captain but as the first name on the team sheet, as Lennon showed again why he should have started on the right in this World Cup.
McClaren had already shown his future intentions when he tried to persuade Sven to play Lennon on the right wing and drop Beckham back to fullback against Ecuador, a suggestion Beckham of course dismissed for the good of himself and the detriment of England. Because even McClaren knows that with the system chosen you need flyers not lame donkeys, you need to pick 4-3-3 players like Chelsea & Holland do not 4-5-1 players who slow everything up and don’t support the lone front man because they don’t have the ability to do so.
Peter Taylor was right to pick Beckham as his captain 6 years ago when he introduced a younger looking England in his game as caretaker coach but six years on Sven was too much in awe of the pinup to see that the last decent game he really had was against Greece over 4 years ago, 3 inept tournament performances later Sven was still sticking by his man and thinks he should carry on as a player – again a situation where Beckham is thinking of himself and the chance to get 100 caps than of the team.
Remember when we were meant to believe Sven would be a change from Keggy and not have favourites who would get into the team no matter what, everyone would have the chance if they proved themselves nobody had the shirt by right – well that turned out to be complete bollocks the moment Svennis asked for Beckham’s autograph, for his daughter…right…bet it’s laminated and a touch sticky now.
Add to this his other favourites, who were either well passed their sell by dates, Seaman or should never have picked in the first place – David James & Emil Heskey – the goalkeepers especially ones that cost us dear.
The only decent thing Svennis has done over the last 5 and half years in charge is to break up the cliques that had built up in the England camp, but when you and your little mate Tord have been paid a fortune to win tournaments getting players to all eat at the same table is not exactly value for money.
I remember hearing a lot about how anybody could have been in charge of the England rugby union side when they won the World Cup and they would have still won it, well Sven wouldn’t, because anyone else could have got more out of the England players at his disposal, just think what a Hiddink or Scolari or a Venables or a Sir Alf could have done with this lot – I’m not thinking three straight meek quarter final losses.
I don’t suppose Svennis climaxed so quickly with Ulrika and the FA slapper as he did with England where he pretty much rolled over and fell a sleep after that glorious night in Munich, how long we waited for the second coming…
As said neither side deserved to win the quarter final, no matter how bad England were Portugal matched them, and England had the excuse of carrying two players and having another sent off.
That well known football expert Sepp Bladder…Blatter whinged on about England only playing with one up front after the Ecuador game but I’ve yet to hear him have a go at Portugal who against a depleted opponent removed their striker Pauleta (who you noticed scores in qualifying but not tournaments) and really had no one up front ’til Postiga came on 4 minutes from full time.
Of course Portugal did their usual scummy act during the game with Ronaldo being at the forefront, from the moment he went in to “butt” Rooney through his rolling round screaming in agony at nothing to his snide advances to the ref that Rooney should be sent off.
Was it a stamp or not – well to start with it shouldn’t have got that far Rooney was fouled a number of times in the build up, the ref obviously playing advantage 🙄
So Rooney is fouled one final time by Carvalho, who by this time is on the floor pulling Rooney who is on one leg back, well that floating foot had to go somewhere so Rooney wouldn’t fall over – just like an English player to stay on their feet when fouled, OK it went straight into the Portuguese defender’s knackers the ref blew, gave a foul and stood there with his arm out.
If he was going to give a card he would have surely gone for his pocket, Rooney was right there stood up in front of him, but he said nothing to Rooney and no card was coming ’til Crybaby ran up said something and Rooney pushed him, then with a flash Horacio Marcelo Elizondo’s eyes lit up and the card was out.
The resulting wink Ronaldo aimed at his bench said it all for most of us.
The thing is it should have been the other way round, we should have a go with these “dirty tricks” all it would have taken is ask the Man Utd players what Ruud van Nistelrooy said to Ronaldo to get the spotty little mincer blubbing, a few crybabys and mummy’s boy in his lug hole should have done it.
If those Man Utd players, Neville, Ferdinand, Rooney, have anything about them his life back at Old Trafford won’t be fun.
And the cries of bad losers from the western part of the Iberian Peninsula can just be countered with pointing out their exit from the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2000, how many player banned ? Was Joao Pinto ever allowed back on a field ?
All in all a very bad World Cup for England, christ even when Rooney went down with his broken foot at Chelsea, with my dislike for Sven & Beckham I never figured it would have been this bad, but should have known a penalties defeat would come into it. And a bad penalty shoot out at that, did any of them look the slightest bit confident ?
Gerrard for the first time all tournament decided not to hit the ball has hard as he possibly could, would have been nice if he’d tried that before, say during the game and when passing to another England player, you know so they had a chance to control it and keep possession.
Frank Lampard – his pen was exactly like every other shot of his in Germany – well of course except those that flew over the bar – straight into the keeper’s hands – respect Lamps 🙄
Yes after putting in probably his 5 worst performance for club or country over the last couple of weeks Franky boy thinks he deserves more respect and absolutely no criticism.
I’ve been a little bit upset that, after what I’ve done in the last couple of years, I’ve missed chances and a few people have been on my back.
I’m upset about that because I’ve worked my socks off to try to be successful in this World Cup.
I would have loved to have scored the winning goal and shown a few people what they wanted to see.
I’m getting criticism from outside and I feel it’s a bit unjust and it gets my back up. I think I deserve a little bit of respect for what I’ve done in the last few years but sometimes people come and want to knock you down. Frank Lampard
Yeah if it was only for the misses Frank, maybe if you’d done something…anything else during the games the misses might have been overlooked but you did sod all, contributed diddly, but you deserve to be there and praise for past glories *cough*Beckham*cough*.
Hargreaves – well I picked all the other guys who missed and I had a feeling he may also only because it seems a law of the game that the best player on the day misses but I should have remembered his German schooling.
Don’t know how many people I argued with over Hargreaves’ inclusion in the squad but at times it seemed I was the only one that thought he should be there – been nice to say “I told you so” about the man-of-the-match, how far did he run on Saturday ? The tone of the “pundits” somewhat changed after their half-time “he’s useless” “he should be off” comments, kinda up there with the ITV lot’s assessment the Riquelme should be substituted in the Germany v Argentina game.
Carragher – at least he had the balls to go up there, but how many times has he scored for ‘Pool over the years ? 3 isn’t it ? Why is he taking pens in a World Cup quarter final ?
So now were are left with knowing Lennon & Hargreaves should be major parts of the team from now on and wondering – Steve McClaren can part of the problem of the last five and half years now become the solution ?