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Who'll stop the rain?

Dave Bowler

11/22/07

If England have ever managed to chuck in as woeful a performance as the one against Croatia on a night so important, and on a night where so much was at stake, it certainly wasn't in the recent past. To play like a pub team, and a pub team with a hangover, on a night where European Championship qualification was at stake? Is there anything good left to say?

Well, maybe one thing. Former England defender Paul Parker said before the game that failure to qualify might finally be the wake up call the game needs. God willing it will be, for they did not just lose a game they only needed to draw, they were humiliated, undressed. Just like the Emperor, Steven Gerrard stood there starkers, save for the captain's armband which was not enough to save his, nor England's dignity.

That Steve McClaren was simply not up to the job was clear. His clueless performance from the touchline, stood beneath a brolly like Mary Poppins, was the final death knell on a deeply uninspiring tenure as England boss. In just over a year, he has managed to make the England public crave Svengali Eriksson in a way that nobody has since Ulrika Jonsson.

McClaren was persuaded to do the decent thing and retire to the drawing room with a loaded revolver as they did in the days of Victorian melodrama and there was no option. There's not a single person left with a shred of confidence in a man who seems to have wilfully thrown away every advantage handed to him. Eighteen months and what do we have to show for it? Well, Steve's got some nice new teeth.

Changing tactics and formations and personnel game after game is guaranteed to fail, particularly at international level. Yet game after game, McClaren has done just that. And then, this season, when injuries caused him to stumble upon a shape and an organisation that worked, what was his reaction? Biggest game of the tournament and he throws it out.

English football is not that sophisticated at its heart. We play 4-4-2 and we play it pretty well as long as you have the balance of personnel. An attacking central midfielder and a defensive one. Wide players who can cross the ball but are clever enough to tuck in and make a solid midfield barrier when the opposition has it, who are willing to help out the full-backs behind them. Basically, it's the shape that helped England to that slew of 3-0 wins earlier this autumn. So, on a night when you only need to draw at home, where did this 4-3-3 / 4-5-1 thing come from?

The obsession with playing Gerrard and Lampard in the same central midfield is beyond a fetish. It's also beyond a joke. It doesn't work, and it never has. Did either of them have any influence on the game at all, Lampard's penalty aside? No. The balance of Barry or Hargreaves and Lampard or Gerrard looks right. We can all see that. So why throw it out?

Name an English team that really looks the part when playing a single striker? Exactly. So why suddenly go with that? In fairness, Peter Crouch was the only England man who performed at any level, and the only one who looked as if he wanted to make anything happen in the first half especially. But as the sole striker, just who was he heading the ball on for? Knowing he was isolated, with his back to goal, Croatia simply let him win his headers and picked them off as the England midfielders waded towards him from 30 yards away.

And then there's the curious incident of Carson in goal. Where did that come from? Sure, Paul Robinson has hardly distinguished himself between the posts, but having stuck with him so far, did you really need to chuck in a rookie for a game like this? Played on a swamp? In pouring rain? Behind a back four that, Sol Campbell apart, had next to no experience?
And, in Wayne Bridge, had next to no clue?

If you wanted to find a better way of ensuring that a promising goalkeeper should have the worst night of his life and then disappear from view forever, that was it. Ok, nobody would have expected Carson to make the kind of monumental error that led to the first goal, but the odds on it weren't that long either in the circumstances. Dropping Robinson for such a game was a ludicrous decision. And it got exactly what it deserved.

What was alarming was that as soon as Croatia went in front, England looked clueless, shapeless, lifeless. Not a soul in that team tried to pull things together. Where was the captain Steven Gerrard we see for Liverpool? Couldn't 60 cap Frank Lampard step up to the plate? Sol Campbell? No. There was a lot of hiding, and very little standing up and being counted. Not until David Beckham came on - and if we're reliant on a player who has scarcely kicked a ball in the last two months, there's something very, very wrong.

Yes, there were injuries, and of course that makes a difference. But talk about self inflicted wounds. Why play Michael Owen in Austria when everyone knows that his leg is likely to snap if there's a light breeze? Especially when the striking options are so limited. We finished the Croatia game with three central strikers on the field, none of whom can get a game for his club. What does that tell you about the depth of talent in our game?

And there's the rub. The post-McClaren era will still be an era beset with the same problems. England "stars" whose reputations far outstrip their ability. A lack of English players to choose from is also a big issue - a recent Premiership fixture programme saw 88 English players involved as against 178 from abroad.

Above all though, we have too many players who really don't get it. Who don't have any tactical nous, nor enough technical quality. How often did Croatia waste possession? Hardly ever. How often did they spring the English defence with quick movement and intelligent distribution? Regularly. It could very easily have been six goals to Croatia rather than three - then it would have been Hungary's visit to Wembley in 1953 all over again. By contrast, how often did England actually keep the ball? Rarely. Gerrard couldn't pass water, Lampard was marginally better, Barry slightly worse. But if you don't keep the ball, you don't control the game.

But you can at least use a little intelligence can't you? When England got back into the game thanks to a soft penalty and then a rare moment of real quality from Beckham and Crouch, the job was done. See it out lads, run the clock down, play keep ball against a side that didn't need to win. So why were we still chasing to take free-kicks and throw ins so fast? Control, shape, organisation, block it out. It might not be pretty but in games like this, nothing matters beyond the result - the game was a fabulous spectacle but was any England fan enjoying it? Not exactly.

So where do we go from here? Firstly, no more of the Gerrard / Rooney / Lampard / Terry are Gods stuff. Good players, not greats. The group had one good team in it. Croatia. England were abject against them on two occasions. What does that say about our superstars? But they do have decent ability and they could be perfectly capable at international level if playing in the right system and educated tactically.

Secondly, please, please, please don't go the Sam Allardyce route and confuse passion for quality at international level. Admittedly England were woefully short of passion in the first 45 minutes, but the headless chicken percentage approach does not cut it at this level. You'll get picked off.

Thirdly, let's cut our expectations. England went to the last World Cup, supposedly as champions in waiting. Laughable. This is not a golden generation, it's a plastic one. Invest in youth football, play more English players in the Premier League, but accept that for the time being, we don't deserve a place at the top table and we're a long way from doing so.

Finally? Jose won't take the job. Marcello Lippi might. It will need a genius to take an ordinary outfit to the next Wold Cup with any hopes of success. And he's got the track record.