The Resurgence of English Football

I watched the match last night. Dear, oh dear. (Oh, in case you're worried, the title of this post is not meant sarcastically.)

One good thing that comes from the game, though, is that it gives me an excuse to share my patented "5-point Universal Disaster Recovery Plan". This is the procedure that I advocate for the recovery from any disaster, big or small. As the name may suggest, there are five steps, which must be followed in order. Any attempt to skip a step, or to switch the order is doomed to failure, and will probably only make the problems worse.

So, here it is:

1. Stop assigning blame. This is mostly an instruction for those on the inside. It would be very easy for the players to blame the manager, for the manager to blame the players, for everyone to blame the keeper, or the FA, or whoever. It never helps, and just creates bad feeling, bad feeling that can utterly destroy the team. Besides, it's generally pointless; there is almost always enough blame to go around. There certainly is in this case.
   
2. Stop making excuses. Again, it would be very easy to comment on how bad the pitch was last night, or that Rooney was well outside the box when he gave away that penalty to Russia, or note that England were suffering from a huge injury load. There is certainly some truth in some or all of these. However, once again, this does nothing to help the situation. The blunt fact is that England have failed to qualify, that they failed to win the game last night, and they did not deserve to do either of these things. It's invariably better to accept this as it is, and move forward.
   
3. Soberly, and without blamestorming, work out what went wrong. In the case of England, I'm going to come back to this one. But for Scotland, the thing that ultimately made the difference was that our players froze in Georgia and failed to win that match. What this says is that the team have to go out and play every match as though it is vital to be at your best... precisely because it is. I'm not sure exactly why they froze up, but it's something that we need to sort out for the World Cup campaign.
   
4. Determine what steps you are going to take to prevent the problem from occurring again. Again, from England's point of view, I will come back to this. From Scotland's, I don't think there's actually too much to do - just make sure you go into the next campaign with the same mindset as we did this one, and make sure we get the wins at Hampden and against the supposedly 'minor' teams. Oh, and don't start thinking the job is done until it is done.
   
5. Execute the plan developed in step 4.
   

And that's it - the 5-point Universal Disaster Recovery Plan. It doesn't have a clever acronym, but that's okay - 'Universal' is such a great word that you want to say it in full anyway.

Now, about England... (the next bit may well read like a bloody Scot slagging off the English. If you are feeling especially sensitive, you might want to stop reading.)

The problems with England start at the top. It was right that Sven left after the World Cup, as his team had barely stuttered through their group, and only started playing in the tournament after Rooney was sent off against Portugal. However, the appointment of Steve McClaren was a mistake. It had become apparent that he just wasn't the man to take England forward, and even had England won last night he should have been replaced. If there is one good thing to come out of last night's result, it is that England won't waste another year on a manager who just wasn't the right man for the job.

Next, we have the players. Too many of them are automatic selections, despite the fact that too many of them have failed to pull their weight. It must be a damning indictment of English football that the best play of the night last night came from a half-fit has-been and the third-choice striker. Don't get me wrong, Beckham's cross was absolutely glorious, but what the hell was wrong withthe other twelve men (starting eleven plus three subs) who played for England last night?

A special mention must be made of the goal-keeping situation. A rookie keeper was installed for the match, and made at least one basic error. However, his selection was probably not a mistake. The blunt fact is that England have not had a decent keeper since Ronaldinho's free kick destroyed Seaman.

Oh, and finally... although they have no role in events on the part, some measure of blame should be levelled at the English media. The constant hype-ing of the team whenever they go into a tournament, followed by the inevitable slating any time they dare to not win a game 5-0 with a stellar performance does absolutely nothing for the players' confidence. There will come a time when England are genuinely amongst the favourites for a major tournament (assuming they apply a proper recovery plan, rather than just assuming that all their problems are solved by sacking the manager), but that time is a long way off. The media need to recognise that, and calibrate their expectations accordingly, or England are doomed to a repeat of last night's farce.

You'll note that I haven't discussed the number of foreign players in the premiership. There is no point in discussing that as a problem, for two reasons. Firstly, European law means that there is nothing that the FA can actually do about it. Secondly, if the English players were good enough, they would be getting games with their teams. As businesses, the various teams want to win, and that means employing and playing the best players available anywhere. If those players aren't English then the answer is not to artificially remove foreign players from the domestic game... it is for the clubs to start producing better English players. (Yes, that's a very superficial treatment of this issue; this post is already too long, and I'm only halfway done, so I hope you'll forgive me.)

So, what is to be done?

Well, in short, the answer is revolution!

As I mentioned above, I felt that Steve McClaren had to be removed regardless of the result last night. He wasn't the man to take England forward. I also felt that the successor had to be English and had to represent "a safe pair of hands". Had things gone well yesterday, said person could have shepherded them through the tournament, and then built towards the World Cup. And, my initial pick would have been Terry Venables, him being the most successful England manager of recent years. Obviously, that is now no longer an option.

Looking at the various names in the frame, I see no credible English option. That being the case, and looking at the options, I'm going to recommend the man who was my preferred option to succeed Sven - Martin O'Neill. I don't think England could land either Mourinho or Scolari (and I'm not sure either is really the best choice anyway), which puts the Irishman head and shoulders above the remaining choices.

Once a new manager is in place, he absolutely must be given time to work. In fact, I'm going to argue that England should write off the World Cup of 2010, and instead build towards Euro 2012, with a view to being serious contenders to win that competition. (Qualification for the World Cup should be considered a minimal requirement, but I think that even being eliminated at the group stage could be considered acceptable. The long game is, at this stage, more likely to produce results than any short-term strategy.)

Next up, what to do with the team? Well, the first thing to do is to look to youth. Too many of the players currently in place are not pulling their weight, and a lot of that is because they are automatic picks for the side. By bringing forward credible young players, and being ruthless about dropping underperforming established names, the manager should be able to light a fire under his stars.

As for the specifics of the game... I'm not an expert. However, it was very obvious yesterday that England played best when they were in a 4-4-2 formation, so I would go with that in all but extreme cases. There is a reason it's a classic, after all.

Up front, they need a bit more strength in depth. Owen and Rooney both seem to be unfortunately injury-prone, so the team should be built under the assumption that one or both will be permanently unavailable. So, more good players are needed. (Actually, I would also be tempted to promote Crouch to first-choice striker, since he seems to have been the most effective for England for some time.)

In midfield, England have the opposite problem, which is a surfeit of decent players. The only problem here is that Lampard and Gerrard just don't seem to be able to co-exist. So, you have to drop one of them and build the team around the other. Simply saying, "as professionals they should be able to play together" doesn't help; they each obviously under-perform while the other is playing. Gerrard was the better during the World Cup, so I would give him the nod, although neither played well yesterday.

Again, in defense England need more decent players, and they have to come through youth development. None of the players who were on the pitch last night are good enough, and although England were missing several key figures, your second eleven really need to be good enough to step in as required.

Finally, England must find a decent (no, scratch that, a superb) keeper from somewhere. Until they do, they can forget about being seen as a major force. However, looking around I don't see any candidates.