Liverpool FC Forum

0asis wrote:

puroresu wrote:Same old story with England. This so called great midfield or "best midfield in the world" cannot keep possesion. Every time England play a half decent side they cant keep the ball. Its pathetic and the reality is Englands players are overrated. Blaming it on the heat is just a joke. Listen you stupid players, everyone has to play in the heat and you are supposed to be at peak fitness condition. 2010 has a World Cup in South Africa, where its even warmer, so prepare your excuses now. Its simple,if u keep the ball you dont have to run as much as the ball does the work. If u give away the ball u have to chase to get it back using more energy. Its quite simple really.  This so called world class midfield also played in portugal in 2004 and Portugal totally dominated as once again Englands so called great midfield could not keep the ball.  Maradonna said Englands players have square feet and he aint wrong.  Sven cant make the players keep the ball and I think people need to stop believing the hype.  Technically the players are not good enough and until things change at grass roots level that will always be the case.  QF is the best England can hope for. I aint judging it on todays game.  I'm looking at 2002 - 2006.  England cannot compete technically againts good sides. Oh and considering set pieces is Englands best chance of scoring shows what a joke the side is. lack of skill, guile and genuine creativity.

You raise some good points, heat is not an excuse and we did give the ball away far too many times. However to say the England players as a whole are tactically inept is just laughable really. We have a squad of very good players, fact, not fiction. With Gerrard you have the most complete player in the world, fact. We have players like Terry who aren't the most techincally gifted but are good solid players. You don't need a whole squad of players to be techincally superior, you need to be able to do your job well and pull off win.

I think the only tehcincally poor person in the England camp is Sven Goran Eriksson.

0asis wrote:

puroresu wrote:If thats the case why is it England can never keep the ball.  Always happens.  I never see England control and dominate posession against good teams.

Perhaps the players cannot work as a unit? Ever thought about that? If you seriously think the England players lack technically ability you are very wrong. Sven's constant changing of tactics, players and formations means that England never gel properly, hence why we sometimes play very poorly. But you scrutinze the performance, yesterday, I doubt England will care, we got the win and we got the three points.

puroresu wrote:considering Peter crouch is regarded as one of Englands best technical players shows the lack of genuine technical ability in the squad.  I do not see how Sven can be blamed.  Its not just yesterdays game.  Brazil 02, France and Portugal 04 was the same English failing to keep the ball.  I watch Riquelme and the only player who comes close to his skill level is Rooney.  He was playing against a good Ivory Coast side but found space, kept the ball and played accurate passes time and time again.     The claim of "best midfield in the world"cannot be justified at all.

As for the heat BS.  I guess African and South American players can play badly in Winter and say "we are not used to this climate".

We're not as techincally superior as many South American teams, no, not trying to say we are. However to say we lack techincal presence is just an outrageous comment to make. There is techincal ability within the England squad and English players. It's it Svena fault for always picking his team via the media's opinion or his favourites.

Sven has gambled on an unfit Rooney, who may only play one game in the whole entire competition, depending on his fitness and how far we go in the competition. He gambled on a striker who has yet to play a Premiership game, so I think it is his fault. We should of taken Robbie Fowler because he's the best box finisher in the world bar none, if anyone's seen a better box finisher than Fowler let me know, and we should of taken Darren Bent, why? Well we lack pace upfront, Owen's not sharp at all.

We also play somewhat negative tactics and we try and play at a fast tempo and in the end hoof the ball up the pitch to the forwards, without taking our time, creating space, using the width of the pitch. We tend to try and get the ball forward from the defence to the strikers and miss out the middle man, the midfield. Saying that we need to be able to play at a quick tempo and at a medium tempo too, we should be able to adjust ourselves a lot better.

I've never said that England has the best midfield in the world. That would be the English media, then again what country doesn't build their team up? Every country does it, just not as much as the English media. I'll say this we have one of the best set of players in the World. We just need to be able to fully function as a team.

As for the weather, I sed in another thread before the World Cup and Ace Ventura can lay claim to this altho he differs with me, I sed the heat isn't an excuse and it's a disadvantage we must get over by being mentally strong and having a good attitude to winning the match.

We played badly yesterday, so what? We still collected three points, and we still managed to win even when we weren't playing at our best. We'll improve, the players know that and I'm sure they will improve for the Trinidad & Tabago match.

Yeah, we aren't the most technically gifted team in the world, but that doesn't mean we are a bad team and it doesn't mean we can't win the competition.

But I'm sure if Cisse was English we'd be the most technically gifted country in the world, right?
   

john craig wrote:

Bamaga man wrote:But heres a quick question to all non English Liverpool loving fans who love to knock England.

If that was Liverpool in a CL group game, would you all be telling us that was a proffesional performance job well done. Won when we didnt play well and all that  ?

I think I see what you're getting at with that question Bamaga.  First of all though I want to make it clear that I want England to do well in the tournament, you seem awful defensive if anyone non-English expresses any sort of opinion on the England team.  I wasn't trying to knock them, just giving an honest assessment on what I saw yesterday.

To answer your question I'd say no, I wouldn't be happy if that because it actually wasn't a professional performance.  Players like Beckham and Lampard did not carry out the defensive part of their game properly, now you can hardly call that professional.  Would I be happy with the result?  Of course, as I previously said 3 points is 3 points, and as much as I hate him, Gary Neville hit the nail on the head the other day when he said the world cup is a 'results tournament'.

The other point is that you are comparing that to a Liverpool CL game, which is actually a bad analogy.  Tournament football is very different.  If a team has an off week in the CL, then you can say, all right, we got away with it now we have 2 weeks til the next CL game to get things sorted.  England don't have 2 weeks til their next game, which is why I'd be more concerned.  But also as I said before I don't think they can play any worse than that and hopefully that's their worst performance out of their system and they can go from strength to strength.  Although I'd have a lot more faith in them if they had a manager who is not tactically-inept.  Not meaning to cause offence, but Sven doesn't seem to have a clue and it could cost England in this tournament.

John my comments were not directed at you, I read your your post and agreed with it. My response was at those who love to see England fail. I understand that not every Liverpool fan would like to see England do well because they are of course not English or whatever. My question was irrespectable of the CL group phase which was the closest comparison I could make. Was, if Liverpool had won playing that badly they would be out saying 'thats the sign of a good team'.

The trouble with the English is that I think we're  just to one dimensional. Not just in football but most sports, I just saw England get a drubbing against Australia in the rugby and they were the same as England were yesterday, too predictable and one dimensional.

The back four are pretty much solid enough for me, but it all goes to pot when we're watching how the midfield quartet of Beckham, Lampard, Gerrard and Cole perform. I ask you, why can they not work as a unit, why cant they get the ball on the floor and knock a few passes together. They cant play keep ball and with players like that, thats the least you'd expect. Maybe its because we play more direct I dont know, but what I do know is that we need a Nicky Butt Paul Ince type of player in there.  Not someone who is just able to break down opposing team attacks. But a player who can put there foot on the ball and play it simple. Someone like Haman would be perfect except he's German    who by having him in the midfield would gel Gerrard, Beckham and Cole together instead of having this individual head less chicken malarky. He would bring that calmness to the team. The names on paper look good but they are far from the most effective and efficent midfield in the world.

Like another chap said on here, England tend to drop to the level of there opponents or raise there game when playing against there respective teams. And if T&T put up a fight like they did against Sweden and play aswell, then England will definately need to raise there game.

Scottbot wrote:Rather than join in with the national sport of slating the England team (i'd rather leave that to the collective bunch of idiots who call themselves the national press) i'd rather look at some of the positives to come out of the game.

1- We won the game. Did anyone notice? I thought for a minute we must have lost. We were never going to roll over a Paraguay side that are traditionally very well organised and excellent defensively. They have a good pedigree and their record at the past two World cups is impressive.

2- Sweden blew it against Trinidad and Tobago so we are very much in the driving seat.

3- We traditionally have lousy start in major tournaments. The pressure has eased considerably going in to the next game.

4- In the first half yesterday i thought we played very well. we played a very English game. It was high tempo, we pressed them all over the pitch, didn't allow Paraguay the chance to settle or get into any kind of rythym and created some opportunities. I think the reality is that England were never going to be able to keep that up for the whole game and needed to play a more continental game in the 2nd half.

5- We looked solid defensively. Everyone was creaming their pants about Germany the other night because they looked good going forward and scored a couple of cracking goals but the truth is that they were poor. The German back four made Costa Rica look like Brazil at times on Friday.

6- Players who did well; Stevie was man of the match for me, he was everywhere at times and did himself credit in his first game in a World Cup. Lampard - Quite a few getting stcuk into him on here but i thought he played quite well and at times (contrary to everybody else's opionion) i thought Lampard and Gerrard loked like they were begining to play well together. Ferdinand was excellent at the back, i thought Crouch had a decent game and Joe Cole looked dangerous in patches.

7- Owen got some more match time under his belt. As Liverpool fans, we all know it takes Michael several games to get his sharpness and touch back. He still looks a way off for me but yesterday will have done his fitness some good.

Changes - Our felt the route cause for some of the team's struggles yeaterday was the full-backs. Cole is struggling to get back to form after so long out of action and Neville (who has also been injured) did not look fully fit to me. Neither man did much to support Beckham and Cole and i would be tempted to look at Carra and/or Bridge i the next game.

stmichael wrote:i suppose a win is a win but i saw too many worrying signs that england have not learned from mistakes in the past. it's almost as if the worst thing that we can do under sven is score early because we always end up trying to hang on to a 1-0 lead rather than trying to kill the game off.

ok first half we were comfortable but second half we just handed the initiative to paraguay from the word go. peter crouch cannot play upfront on his own. in the end we were just knocking long balls up to him and he had nobody to knock the ball onto.

and as for the substitutions, same old story. why the hell has theo walcott gone to the world cup if sven isn't going to use him? michael owen goes off and walcott is the only fit and available striker on the bench. yet he brings on stewart downing.

oh well, things can only get better i suppose.

I agree entirely, I'm sensing deep apathy from Sven, he doesn't really seem remotely bothered about leading England to the World Cup final. He's got his huge wage salary and endorsments, plus that huge pay off, so he doesn't care. You can tell he's apathetic due to the squad he picked for the World Cup. Absolutely no thought went into picking that squad, he just looked on the back pages of the Mirror and chose his team from that.

His substituions show a manager who is inept, I'm praying we don't get Germany in the last 16 because if we play like that, we'll be on the wrong end of a football lesson, that's for sure.

I also think we lack fire power upfront to really be a threat, especially against the top teams. It looks like a majority of our goals will come from set plays.



I hope we improve drastically, otherwise it will be shattered dreams and broken hearts...yet again.