ANR readers have asked me to stop making rash predictions, so I won’t say whether England will win or lose or draw tonight.
I don’t fancy this England team but that doesn’t mean they cannot win against Croatia, who have already qualified for Euro 2008 and might roll over, just go through the motions. Their coach Slaven Bilic has said he doesn’t like the pitch, which was damaged by that NFL game three weeks ago.
Scott Carson in goal is less of a gamble than Paul Robinson, even if he has only one cap. And the speedy, bouncy but erratic Shaun Wright-Phillips on the right is a better call than the unfit David Beckham. Becks is a squad player now, and glad to be just a squad player, even if Simon Fuller is probably telling him, “Walk away from England, it’s a train crash.”
I doubt if England will suffer from the absence of Michael Owen, who is an over-rated crock. When Owen is there he can score but he can’t play. The fact that Owen can’t play is the biggest flaw in the England team and has been for five years.
The 4-3-3 England team is expected to be : Carson ; Richards, Campbell, Lescott, Bridge; Gerrard, Barry, Lampard ; SWP, Crouch, Joe Cole.
That is a typical Sven-type compromise, an unbalanced team that is strong on the right side but weak on the left, especially defensively. I’ve never seen England play 4-3-3 and make it work. Still, I can’t wait for kick-off to see what happens and to see how good Croatia are and whether they can be bothered.
The Croatia team includes Eduardo, Kranjcar and Corluka from Arsenal, Portsmouth and Man City, and also Luka Modric, the little left winger whose creative talents are admired by Arsene Wenger.
England had a 1-0 win in a friendly in Austria last Saturday. With Wayne Rooney out for a month, and Michael Owen held together by sellotape, Steve McClaren played Owen in Vienna five days before the biggest game of McClaren’s career.
England produced one quick, slick move in the whole 90 minutes and when Crouch touched the ball into Owen’s run, Owen wasn’t good enough to keep his shot down and Alex Manninger, on as a sub, parried it.Owen then went off with a thigh strain which could keep him out for a month. McLaren has one reliable goalscorer and he is very injury-prone, so he played him and he got crocked. What a surprise !
He recently found that Gareth Barry clicked with Steven Gerrard, so he dropped Barry in Vienna and restored Frank Lampard.
He went with a straight 4-4-2 against a very poor side who are 88th in the FIFA rankings. On a cold, wet night, England looked like team with no pace, no movement to support the ball, no habits of possession, no ability to move the vehicle up and down through the gears
Beckham was looking old and tired and rusty, Lampard was having to drop far too deep. First half? Hopeless. We were clueless. Playing a straight 4-4-2 we usually are clueless. We need a half-striker to link the play. When we had Beardsley and Sheringham we played some football.
Then Crouch headed in a hugely high Beckham corner from the left and we led 1-0 at the break.
So last Saturday I thought the England team to play Croatia should be Gareth Barry & Peter Crouch +9.
Gareth Barry is team player who slows the game down. Most English players speed it up and lose the ball but Barry slows it down and keeps the ball. He made a difference when he replaced Gerrard at half-time. He doesn’t waste the ball. He is tidy and he plays his own game. In Vienna, as always, Barry was holding the ball in a way which said : Come to me, make an angle for me, give me options.We need more of that.
David O’Leary sold Peter Crouch from Aston Villa to Southampton for £2 million, and a couple of years after that I said that I didn’t rate O’Leary but I did rate Crouch.
In Vienna, Crouch scored his 13th England goal in 23 appearances. That header was his 11th goal in 13 starts.
But England generally lack disguise as well as fluency, so we can’t score in open play. We can’t outfox teams with crafty passing or bright movement.
In 90+ minutes in Vienna, we produced one good move and that was when Owen didn’t score but injured himself.
However, Joleon Lescott, a left footed centreback of 24, is a find. Lescott is more nimble than Sol Campbell and reads the line of a ball in flight better than Sol.
Perhaps inevitably, Steve McClaren is Sven-lite.
Like Sven, he can’t see that if we play Gerrard and Lampard together in midfield they give the ball away too much. McClaren had six years to see that and he has the stats and the DVDs of every game. So why hasn’t he seen that? Because he a complete pillock who should be managing a gym in Stoke-on-Trent.
When Lampard was injured, McClaren brought in Gareth Barry and the team improved. At last we had a midfield that functioned ! Suddenly we had shape, balance, a platform on which to build.
But as soon as Lampard was fit, McClaren brought him back in Vienna and the midfield stopped working !!!! OK, every match is different, its was a cold, filthy night, and the manager wanted to look at a few things.
But McClaren’s England are like a school team. They don’t know how to handle being 1-0 down and they don’t know how to handle being 1-0 up either. If they go a goal down they can’t steady their game, can’t take the sting out of the game by keeping the ball, and if they score first they defend the lead too much, like Sven’s teams did. When we had 12 minutes to get a winning goal in Moscow, we just booted it long every time. We did that because we didn’t believe we were a good side and we didn’t believe we could win by playing football. We panicked and went to pieces and lost 2-1. If you have 12 minutes left, you should pass the ball for 8 minutes and if that doesn’t work, then hoof it long.
Tonight, England can lose and go out. Or they can draw and qualify. Or they could even play well and win and lift everybody.
They could also win without playing well, as England often do. Their results are usually better than their performances. That is because we teach players how to win, rather than how to play.
Peter Crouch says he has never played in a defining game for England until now. I wish him well. I believe in Crouch. I think he can play. And I reckon Micah Richards might be England’s best forward.