Brumby:
Wow. It's rare for one post to be so wrong on so very many levels. I'll try to address as many as I can.
1)"this bollocks from people saying if England fail to win in Estonia they're out": whilst we aren't mathematically out if we don't win, not taking three points from a team who have 0 from five games means our chances are vastly reduced; moreover if we can't beat a team who're inferior on every level how do we expect to beat teams like Russia, Israel or Croatia?
2)"McClaren is practically out of a job already if his team decide not to turn up again": who picks the team & the tactics? You were very quick to criticise "the vegetable" when things went wrong under the previous regime. Why does McClaren get a free pass? The buck stops somewhere, surely? & do you think we look a better or worse team under McClaren?
3)"this nonsense of how Lampard and Gerrard can't possibly play together perpetuates": have you ever seen any evidence to the contrary? Do you think they work well as a central midfield partnership? They're both naturally right-footed, attacking midfielders and when they play together one has to sit deeper than he does for his club (or, as has happened sometimes with Gerrard, be played wide right) and never looks as effective for England. It isn't that they "can't possibly" play together, it's that they don't play together well. How many more ****ty performances do we need for this point to be proved?
4)"You've also then got a huge amount of bias thrown in before a player even steps onto the pitch.": football's tribal by nature, but why would I (an Arsenal fan who, let's face it, isn't likely to have too many of my team in England colours any time soon) give a **** if our central midfield consists of a Chav & a Scouser or a Scouser & a Canadian/German soon-to-be Mancunian? Our team looks better with a holding midfielder, that's not bias, it's common sense.[/QUOTE]
Opening Guff) And you've just done it, congrats.
1) Nor would England be that close to being out either, they'd have to drop points in at least a couple more games probably and it would all be in England's hands. So no points for you there then.
2) I only wanted the vegetable out after the awful performance in 2004 against Portugal. He had his chance there and blew it, I think McClaren is too soft but once he's hired you have to give him a chance. If you sacked every England manager because the team were struggling a bit in qualifying there'd be hardly anyone who'd last longer than a few months.
3) Have you ever seen any real evidence to prove they can't play together? Nope. They've been generally average whoever else they've played with or wherever they've played over recent times. Again you're acknowledging my quote and meandering onto something a little different, I did not say they may not be as effective together as a pairing because of their similarities. The poor ball control (Gerrard), averaging passing (both of them), love of playing the hollywood ball (Gerrard), poor finishing (Lampard) have nothing to do with them playing as a pairing however. They're both over-rated anyway, which is a large part of the problem - it's not that they're allergic to each other and that's why they've been pretty mediocre, it's that they're not that great in the first place. Lampard can make up for it when he's putting chances away, unfortunately he isn't.
4) If there were any CDMs that played for England you'd generally rate them better than what they are. Club player bias plays a part but I was more referring to other things. Things like people thinking Beckham is brilliant on dead ball situations because he finally takes one decent one and England score from it, the media then highlight that moment til the end of time and people derive a false perspective. The reality was he wasted lots of dead ball situations particularly the ones he shot on goal from.
People thinking Gerrard, Carragher etc. is great because of the Liverpool lovers the BBC has. There are all sorts of biases and rose tinted spectacles at work when watching games. Seeing how well a player plays is usually quite subjective and so you've got people like marc who will fill in the blanks as they like - usually from his preconceived ideas which are based on hype and waffle from the media and bits of games he's seen - which in themselves could be ill-judged.
