DISAPPOINTED last night, I was starting to recover until I saw a Danny Taylor story in The Guardian this morning .The headline is :Eriksson will persist with new look but Owen role is a concern
Taylor and Brodkin are really good, I always read them. Taylor’s alarming intro is this :
Sven-Goran Eriksson indicated last night that he was sufficiently satisfied with his period of experimentation to persist with his new-look team for the World Cup.
CAN’T SVEN SEE that Stevie G is not a half-striker? Can’t he see that he never will be? He is too big to play on the half-turn.
Last night showed that Sven’s squad is deeply misguided, badly unbalanced, as I said at the time.Stevie G is not only not Wayne Rooney, he is not Beardsley, not Sheringham, not even Darius Vassell .He is not Dennis Bergkamp either
Bergkamp and Gerrard are both big men, both fast, both with big feet.But Bergkamp’s movement into half-striker positions, areas where he can play killer passes, was always very cute.
Stevie G just can’t do that, cannot play that role.It is NOT his game. It is NOT his game. It is NOT NOT NOT NOT his game.
Taylor writes :
Eriksson was reluctant to confirm that his starting XI would be retained for the opening World Cup match against Paraguay but he made it clear that it was all but a certainty. Asked whether it was the strongest team available to him he replied: “I think so. No, I know so. It’s clear to me.”
OH MY GOD !
Sven is in denial.He is clueless, as I have been saying for years.
FA chief executive Brian Barwick will be the most nervous man in Germany on June 10th.
Because if this campaign is a fiasco, Steve McClaren, his next England coach, will fully implicated in that fiasco.
While I’m typing this at 8.42 a.m. I get a phone call asking if I fancy a musical event.
I’m told I can’t write anything about a dress rehearsal gig “before an invited audience” but it will break up the boredom and get me away from football for a a few hours.
I’ve cheered up already.