William the White wrote:
Just to say... Rooney has to start next game if he's fit... and every other game as long as we are in the competition...
You don't junk your only really decent player, impossible to call him 'world class' when the world contains Iniesta... but he's your best so you need to work out how to maximise his impact and go for it... However hopeless the quest...
Ashley Young was dreadful tonight... Carroll scored a great goal... Walcott changed the game... Wellbeck did ok and then did something very special...
I'd start with Wellbeck, Rooney just behind, Walcott instead of Young... It's a judgement call, and i'm pretty uncertain about my judgement - other than Rooney must start if he's fully fit...
I'd prefer to have the players who could play with the dynamism and fluidity of Spain, who could beat us by 5 or 6 on a reasonable day... and make a nonsense of 'systems'... A bit of me expects them to be doing just this within a week...
The reality is that the first 20 mins tonight looked like the worst game in the entire tournament so far... The game ended up exciting (I suspect only for those with a vested interest in the teams though, i suspect in the bars of Madrid they were having a real laugh)... for much of our play so far I've been hoping we get out of it soon and I can concentrate on appreciating some lovely Spanish, German, Portuguese football...
I don't get this at all.
Portugal, lovely play? No better than we are IMO.
Germans are supremely organised far better than we are, but lovely football? Not so far.
We all know what Spain do, however, in their first game they played without a fecking striker. and it wasn't as entertaining as last night.
I'm all for England bashing when fair, but your last sentence could have come straight out of the fast show 'soccer fan sketch'.
To be honest I'm a little bit agreeing with Hoboh, the Spain wankathon is tedious, they have some fantastic players but they basically are lucky with what Barca have done. I also think seeing then ping it around for 10 minutes then attack then ping it around for another 10 is less than entertaining at times. Fine against shite like Ireland but a very average Italy side made that game pretty dull. No doubt Spain will win it, unless Germany can stop them.
But personally I don't want England trying to emulate Spain. It's pointless. Im willing to bet that Spain will never be able to emulate this side they've got now. Let's try and be as good as we can at our own game. The goals Carroll and Welbeck scored will be hard to top in terms of quality this tournament and as good as owt else I've seen so far. We may not even get past Ukraine and probably given what we've got available will have done well if we do. And we have feck all chance against Spain. But we need to build a team that is better around our own style, that is seen on our league. Otherwise we are just setting up to fail.