and love.
While England’s almost A-team shone in Germany the B-team grasped their chance with both hands, fell over, let it slip out of their grasp and threw it into the back of their own net, as they lost at home to the Dutch.
When you add in the underperformers in the first game of this international break, with the lot that turned out against Holland in the second game of the break, to the lot that weren’t available, there isn’t much depth to Roy’s mob.
This really was your bog standard England friendly performance. Hand a bunch of understudies their chance to grab a place at Euro 2016, against a team that didn’t qualify in one of the weakest Dutch outfits we’ve seen since before Cruyff pulled on his number 14 shirt and they blow it. Big time.
The contrast between Saturday in Berlin and Tuesday at Wembley couldn’t be greater. Roy has a plan A team, for the most part… there’s no plan B…
All the crowing about Danny Rose’s performance in that first game null and voided in little under an hour, as Rose did what Rose does while others look on with Rose tinted specs. Gormless last gasp dive ins that should have resulted in a penalty very early on, rightfully penalised for a handball later- his hand goes down towards the ball and flicks it away. Defensively against Germany he was up against a wide man and a fullback, here just the forward and yet was all over the place at times.
On the other side I read that Walker was immense and criticism of him is completely out of order because he ran forward and actually played a first time ball that assisted the goal. Wow. Echoes of gooners claiming Ozil’s assist as something.
Well a stopped clock is right twice a day so Walker is half way to being as good as a knackered time piece.
He did it once, did he even attempt it again? Nope. The rest of the time he was his usual self, stopping play in it’s flow, taking that needless extra touch or dozen, running into defenders when he should be running past them. While doing his usual defensive shtick of trying to defend without touching the ball. Grabby, grabby.
He wasn’t the only one who slowed things down, far form it. Hoddle kept going on about how great Lallana had been almost man of the match good. Yet he wasn’t much better than his inept turn out against Germany. One decent pass to Walker in the build up for the goal, in which he really looked like he’d buggered his chance by dithering.
Almost as laughable as Alan Smith giving the award to Barkley. Cul-de-sac finder general.
If you want to look for a parallel for Wilshere look here and not Dier. Running into a defensive wall, losing the ball and falling over, these two could be twins. The new Gazza, yeah, Gazza now, not in his prime.
On Saturday the cry went out why always Henderson?
as he seemed to be on the end of every ball, stuffing up every move with his ineptness. Against Holland it was Milner. He was everywhere, involved all the time and no one wanted that. Dull, dull, dull.
Sturridge apparently was there, I saw him get in Vardy’s way one and that was about it. It looked a like for like replacement for Welbeck from the Saturday’s game.
Drinkwater eventually got Hoddle’s MotM. Well it was slim pickings. Drinkwater started poorly, looked out of his depth to begin with. You figure that Leicester’s game isn’t one of possession, not one of nice passes but let the others have the ball, nick it off ’em and bomb forward. Would this work at international level? Remember Cruyff’s quote about English sides always giving the ball away. He of course wasn’t helped by those around him but grew into the game and certainly was better by the time he was replaced.
The only thing worse was Roy’s desperation in throwing on his stars from the weekend Kane, Alli and Dier to win it. As he moaned about the decisions that led to both the Dutch goals. As said above a correctly given penalty and the second came after a barge in the back on Jagielka. Well the ref had given only one foul for such a barge all night. They all stopped and waited for the whistle instead of playing to it.
In other news Fabian Delph is back in training at Citeh, so Roy can get his dream team midfield trio of Milner, Henderson and Delph back soon… Yeah that’s Roy’s A-team…