maguskwt » Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:45 am wrote:ycsatbjywtbiastkamb » Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:24 am wrote:maguskwt » Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:15 pm wrote:Do you know why England always underperform at the world stage? exactly because of players like Andy Carroll who are being hyped up in the country... good on the floor
If Andy Carroll is considered good on the floor, English football is doomed...
british footballers are so very much over-rated... Wayne Rooney can score goals and plays like a bull dog sure... british messi though?
he's got no intelligence whatsoever...
Alan shearer scored lots of goals in domestic football... but at the world stage? He is probably about the same level as Jan Koller...
The only england internationals worth mentioning in recent times that can be considered as making the grade are Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, David Beckham and Paul Gascoigne...
And even among those 4 only gascoigne has true skills that can unlock defences.
Owen had pace and exceptional finishing. Stevie G had athleticism, passing and overall quality. Beckham had exceptional free kick ability, pin-point crossing and exceptional work-rate... I can't think of anyone else who makes the grade...
andy carroll is good at retaining the ball with defenders all over him, it`s a tough thing to do and plenty of so called great players dont look so great when they are leading the line and recieving the ball with their backs to goal, your an easy target for defenders.
plus england has had loads of good players, john barnes and peter beardsley played in gasgoignes era (beardsley even played in the same side as him) and what about the likes of gary lineker (top scorer at a world cup and nearly top scorer in 2 world cups) who played alongside gasgoigne or what about the likes of paul scholes? the fact you mention beckham before scholes shows what you know about footy!
When I meant by recent times the cut off was gascoigne... yes I like Scholes but i'm afraid he's also another one who performs very good domestically but at the world stage he doesn't outshine the 4 I have mentioned. He is a very very good all-rounder but lacks the cutting edge of Gerrard and Beckham. How many world cup goals did scholes score? I think it was only one in 98... long long time ago... Scholes doesn't outshine Gerrard and Beckham at the international level... that's the fact.
re: Carroll... what is the use if you can receive the ball with your back to the goal and takes eternity to turn with the ball? I can name alot of players who can do it and be more dangerous than Carroll while doing it... for example his namesake Andy Cole, one of the best at turning with the ball, Henry, Ibrahimovic, Torres, our very own and Andy's strike partner Suarez, Adebayor, the other lanky former Arsenal striker whose name escapes me right now... there are alot of players who holds the ball equally well and turns 10 times faster than Carroll...
Defend Carroll all you want but don't make it him out to be something he isn't...
he is an average target man not worth 35 million at all. He will probably become as good as Crouch and Heskey but that's about it. Having said that he doesn't need to be all that good if he works hard. If he works hard and gives 110% he can become as good as Kuyt and contribute to the team like he contributed in the FA cup semi... and that's all what most fans want...
i think you are putting way to much emphasis on international football, there can be a lot of reasons why certain national sides and players dont perform to the best of their ability on the international stage, john barnes often got slated in the press for not replicating his liverpool form in an england jersey so do you think he was rubbish? maybe the fact he regularly got booed by england fans had something to do with it!
it`s a well known fact that over the years spain have produced some great players but they struggled in international competitions because of splits in their camp, mainly along real madrid / barca lines, well on the day that luis suarez refused to shake evra`s hand jamie redknapp told the nation that in the 90`s the liverpool and manchester united players never used to mix in the england squad and infact redknapp said he couldnt stand gary neville back then and he was sure neville didnt like him either.
you are not going to win much or perform well if one half of your team have breakfast on a different table to the other or of an evening if one half plays pool the other half goes and plays darts, all the while making snide remarks about each other. other players from different clubs get dragged into the various cliques and before you know it there is no team spirit at all.
in recent times english clubs have done well in the CL, we have won it and appeared in another final, united have won it twice and appeared in 3 of the last 4 finals, arsenal have appeared in the final and so have chelsea. throughout those sides the mainstays of the side were often english, even mourinho said his main men were john terry and frank lampard, he called them the heart and soul of the club and that was at a time when chelsea had star players from all over the place, it was the same at united, ferguson relied heavily on his british players like ferdinand, giggs, scholes etc and we were no different with gerrard and carragher often being the players who put in big performances in the big games.
to say your not a good player if you dont perform on a international stage is a ridiculous argument, are you trying to say milan baros is better than messi?
and laugh at andy carroll all you want mate (btw carroll`s international career is quite impressive, granted he`s only played 2 games but he was englands best player in his debut game against france and he scored in his other appearance against ghana) but what i`ve often seen in footy is that players who start off at a club in a blaze of glory (nigel clough, stan collymore even patrick berger here) often fade but players that start bad but show the character to ride out the storm and start to improve often end up the best players (pallister had a nightmare start at united but ended up a great player and look at the likes of lucas and even ian rush, he was told by bob paisley that he was on the transfer list at one point early in his liverpool career)
carroll looks to me like he is turning it around and putting in arguably a MoM performance and scoring the winner in the biggest derby game in a quarter of a century is going in the right direction.
Maybe you should have took your own advice and ignored my post ?
