Israel -v- England

[negative creep]

I agree that there is just no passion. Saying 'no more excuses' is all well and good, but nothing changes on the ptich. These players play with passion for their respective clubs, but put on an England shirt and no one seems bothered, and that's what really annoys me. To try hard and fail to win is one thing, to just not bother is quite another. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps that playing for England is no longer an honour, managers keeping their players from internationals through 'injuries', meaningless friendlies perhaps. But it does strike me that if they spent less time shopping or advertising hair care, we might get somewhere

[glassman]

An aspect that Hoddle touched on during the half time talk was how Lennon - and England - didn't make any fuss about being body-checked by the Israeli No.4. Moments earlier, Carragher was shown the yellow card for a similar - but not so cynical - foul.

I'm not advocating that we play for the foul / deceive the referee, but we are clearly being played that way by many of our opponents. For example, Haim, the Israeli No.3 made a conscious effort to wind Rooney up; the result: Wayne gets a yellow card.

The whole England national team approach needs to be put on a boil wash and hung out to dry. Then, introduce a fresh and open-minded manager with an equally fresh and hungry squad.

All this talk about the Premier League being the best... it's full of players who play for their respective national teams who, let's be real about it, take full advantage of our tactically inept and unimaginative style.

Can only hope that the Pearce generation is a team that will pick itself.

[Andy M]

glassman said:

Can only hope that the Pearce generation is a team that will pick itself.

And that it's not Pearce doing the choosing!

[Twit]

I'm not a huge footy fan so I dont really care if England qualify or not... But that game was rubbish, none of the players seemed to want to be there and most of them looked like they didnt give a toss. Whilst the rugby team has been poor recently they have never looked like they didn't give a shit which those players did. But then I thought maybe they don't. If you look logically the Chelsea and Man U players are still in with a very real chance of winning 3 trophies. If you compare that to the outside chance of qualifying for the Euro's and the next to no chance of winning it I know where I would be banking if I was those players. Use the interntational weekends as a weekend off of the more important stuff which is the club football. Sounds mad but I reckon for some that is the case.

As for Lampard and Gerrard in the same team, that is stupid, they play the same game in the same position, you can only play one of them at a time. There is no creativity in the side at all...

Edited by Twit on Monday 26th March 09:41

[rlk500]

Well from the moment that Sven was going to be fired, I feared the worst. We get the "Return of Sven" in Mclaren. The omission of Beckham (rightly or wrongly) was a pathetic symbol of his intent to make his mark rather than the basis for a re-construction of the team around a new ethos. It's just more of the same, we apparantly have "world class" players, however you have to ask just how "world class" they really are when removed from the comfort zones of their clubs. Afterall, the leading european clubs seem to be managing quite well without having to buy our leading lights to bolster their sides. Maybe those european managers really know something that we are not ready to accept yet.

[alex1982]

Was painfull to watch on Saturday night. Mclaren really hasn't got a clue. The subs he made we're like for like, there was no plan b, Rooney never looked like doing anything other than being sent off, Lennon disappeared in the 2nd half after being our best player in the 1st half, Hargreaves ran around like a headless chicken then gave the ball away with every pass, Gerrard tried, but again didn't show the same level of passion as he does for Liverpool and IMHO never has. Lampard had our best chances but for the most part the game passed him by. Rio was in a comfort zone again. The only 2 players to emerge with any real credit were Johnson and Carragher and its a sad state of affairs when Carragher is probably your man of the match

And finally, 1 goal in 5 games...

[Zod]

The problem is that the players would like to win, but they don't want to win. They are not in fear for their places. They don't worry about losing out financially. They believe that they are special becasue they are paid so much and play for England, but they have no comprehension of what it means to give their all to win. So long as they can spend their time in London clubs picking up teenage girls and drinking Cristal, they have no other desires in life.

Bunch of wasters.

[Bing o]

On the plus side, if England don't qualify for Euro 2008, there won't be any tossers driving about with w4nker flags on their cars.....

And our town centres won't be terrorised by the usual mindless Eng-ger-lund thugs....

[Marki]

Bing o said:

On the plus side, if England don't qualify for Euro 2008, there won't be any tossers driving about with w4nker flags on their cars.....

And our town centres won't be terrorised by the usual mindless Eng-ger-lund thugs....

I am with you on that .. and after 2006 we will not have to live with watching such crap play

[sleep envy]

don't worry, if en-ger-land were to somehow scrape through to qualify they'd be knocked out at the end of the group stages

[central]

Now spilled over into the P+P -
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=372109&f=141&h=0